Summary with Organisational Behaviour - Sinding & Waldstrom - 6th edition

What are the foundations of organisational behaviour? - Chapter 1

Organisational behaviour observes the interactions and habits of people and organisations. It tries to improve the organisations effectiveness. The three levels of analysis in organisational behaviour are the individual, the group, and the organisation.

Pfeffer found evidence that ‘people-centred practices’ are strongly associated with higher profits and significantly lower employee turnover. This means that orginisations should pay more attention to their employees.

There are seven people-centred practices that are used by successful companies, which are:

• Job security: eliminate fear of losing a job

• Careful hiring: the emphasis should be on good fit with company culture

• Power to the people: decentralisation and self-managed teams

• Generous pay for performance

• Lots of training

• Less emphasis on status: to build a ‘we’ feeling

• Trust-building: through the sharing of critical information

Organisations have become more global over the years. Globalisation itself does not have an impact on organisational behaviour, but the amount of emphasis on organisational behaviour depends on the location.

Where did the study of organisational behaviour start?

In the 19th century, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber studied the effects of the industrial revolution. Marx studied the development of the working class. Durkheim studied the loss of solidarity in the new society. Weber is known for his work on bureaucracy, and was the first to study organisational behaviour.

Who are the big names in the rational-system view?

Frederick Taylor

Frederick Taylor is the founder of scientific management. This is an approach to management in which all tasks in organisations are analysed, routinised, divided and standardised in depth, instead of using rules of thumb. This leads to more efficiency due to the increasing pace of working because of the divided subtasks.

The consequences of this approach to management are:

• Higher output

• Standardisation

• Control and predictability

• The routine of the tasks allowed the replacement of skilled workers by non-skilled workers

• Thinking is for managers, workers only work

• Optimisation of the tools for each worker

Both employees and managers were analysed. Managers were provided with subtasks. Even though Taylor raised the loans, he got a lot of resistance from the employees. Many employees felt as if they lost their value as skilled employees. Due to misinterpretation and misuse, Taylor had a bad reputation for pressuring workers by letting them use inhumane work methods and forcing them to work at speed to enrich management.

Henri Fayol

Henri Fayol is the founder of ‘management’. Based on his research, he introduced five basic management tasks.

The five basic management tasks are:

• Planning: predicting a course of action to meet the planned goals.

• Organising: allocating materials and organising people. Authority, discipline, control are key concepts of management.

• Leading: giving directions and orders to employees. Convince, influence and motivate others to make them accomplish the goals.

• Co-ordinating: harmonise different departments to one unit, working for the general interest of the company.

• Controlling: to what extent the goals were met + orders are followed. Carried out by an independent + competent employee.

To execute the basic tasks named above, the following fourteen management principles should be obeyed:

• Division of labour

• Authority and responsibility

• Discipline

• Unity of command

• Unity of direction

• Subordination of individual interest to the general interest

• Fair remuneration of personnel

• Centralisation

• Hierarchy

• Order

• Equity

• Stability of tenure of personnel: low turnover

• Initiative by every employee

• Unity among the employees

The six skills a manager should possess are:

• Physical qualities

• Mental qualities

• Moral qualities

• General education

• Specific education

• Experience

Fayol admired Taylor, they both aim at universal descriptions of organising. However, Fayol focused on the manager, while Taylor focused on the worker.

Chester Barnard

Barnard built his theory on general principles of co-operative systems. He describes individuals as separate beings but not totally independent. The freedom of an individual is bounded by biological and physical limitations. The effectiveness in the workplace will increase by co-operative actions. Three necessary elements for co-operative action are willingness to co-operate, a common purpose and communication.

He also states that organisations consist of smaller, less formal groups, which all have their own goals. Management should align those goals to the overall organisational goal. Barnard's main contribution was including individual choice, power and informal groups in organisational theory.

What are the big names in the human relations movement?

The human relations movement was stablished because unions wanted better working conditions and researchers wanted more attention to the human factor within an organisation.

Elton Mayo

Mayo conducted research into the relationship between environmental factors (such as lighting) and worker output at Western Electric’s Hawthorne plant. The Hawthorne studies found no correcation between working conditions and output. Instead, they found that output was influenced by the motivational effects of the attention they got from being part of the experiment, and the different kind of supervision (by researchers, not their own supervisor). In addition, they found that members of informal groups don't always belong to the same formal groups. Every groups creates their own norms and values. Unfortunately, re-analysis did not support the initial claims of the Hawthorne studies. Nonetheless, they did support the human relations movement.

Mary Parker Follett

Mary Parker Follett stressed the importance of human relations in organisations, particularly the improvement of the relationship between management and employees. Employees were the key parts, paying attention to their needs was the way to improve productivity. Follett’s view on management was the integration of the individual and the organisation. She focused on the interests and needs of the workers and managers. The six most important themes of Follett’s work are:

• Dynamism

• Empowerment

• Participation

• Leadership

• Conflict

• Experience

Douglas McGregor

Douglas McGregor formulated two different approaches regarding the human nature, theory X and theory Y. Theory X is the negative way managers traditionally perceived employees, theory Y was formulated to help them break out of this negative view.

The outdated (theory X) assumptions about workers are:

• Most people dislike work.
• Most people must be coerced to work, close direction is necessary.
• Most people avoid responsibility, have little ambition, and prefer to be directed.

The modern (theory Y) assumptions about people at work are:

• Work is a natural activity.
• If committed to objectives, people are capable of self-direction.
• When people are rewarded they become commited to organisational objectives.
• Most people can learn to accept and seek out responsibility
• Most people have imagination, ingenuity and creativity.

What are Morgan's 8 organisational metaphors?

According to Gareth Morgan, everyone has a different image of how organisations look. These images are only partial views of how organisations actually work. You need to combine them to get a realistic image. Morgan summarised the different images in eight metaphors: machines, organisms, brains, culture, politics, psychic prisons, flux and transformation, and instruments of domination.

Machines

This methaphor describes orderly relationships, a clearly defined logical system with subsystems, and predictability and controllability. However, it does not take the point of view of single individuals.

Organisms

The organism metaphor sees an organisation as the human body. It describes an organisation as an open system that transforms inputs into outputs. Organisations must try to adapt to their environment in order to survive. Principles of open systems, change, and life cycles fit in this view. A disadvantage is not enough emphasis on structure, too much emphasis on change.

Brains

In the organisation as brains metaphor, the information-processing capacity is the most crucial aspect. Brains have a complex and flexible way of processing. Every worker has valuable knowledge and is able to learn. Self-regulation is key.

Culture

In this metaphor the development of norms, language, shared values and mental models are emphasized. The members of the organisation construc their own subjecive reality. This metaphor relates to the view of organisations as symbolic interactionism. the main theorist is Karl Weick, who posits that we create an organisation by talking about it. Therefore, it is a social construct. Because this is subjective, two people might look at the same data and come to different conclusions.

Postmodernism takes this subjectivity even further, claiming that there is no one truth. Because of this, a postmodern view makes it impossible to develop general applicable theories.

Politics

The politics metaphor is competative. Resources in an organisation are scarce, and individuals have personal goals that do not always match organisation goals. Central values are: conflict, power, coalitions, influence and competition. Resource dependence is a view that looks at the ways in which organisations are interdependent with their environments.

Psychic prison

In the psychic prison metaphor, the identification with an organisation becomes so strong that it controls how we think. However, organisations are created by people, so the prison is self-built. The development of a psychic prison happens unconsciously.

Flux and transformation

This metaphor sees an organisation as being in a state of constant change. The organisation can exist over time, but inside it is constantly changing. There are four images used in this metaphor.

• Biology: an organism is constantly creating itself.
• Chaos theory: where patterns are found in chaotic system such as a flock of birds flying together.
• Mutual causality: an organisation exists of both negative and positive feedback loops.
• Dialectical change: every concept has an opposite, and cannot exist without its opposite.

Instruments of domination

Organisations can create many positive outcomes for the world, but can also be very destructive to humans and the environment. For example: pollution, production of cigarettes, child labour. Organisations can also be harmful to their employees: their self-image might be connected to an organisation that does harm to the world, or they may be forced to overwork.

Conflict theory

All social structures are based on conflict. There is never stability, because people always have different goals and world views. Scarce resources create conflict and conflict is a source of change. Karl Marx's theories are an important foundation of conflict theory.

Critical theory

The field of critical theory is very broad, so a single definition is difficult to find. However, all agree on the cristicism of functionalism and capitalism. Critical theory is also based on Marx´s theories, and has an emphasis on power as the dominant system in organisations.

What are personal dynamics? - Chapter 2

What is the self-concept?

The concept the individual has of himself as a physical, social and spiritual or moral being. How you view yourself. Cognitions support self-concept, represent any knowledge, opinion or belief about the environment, oneself or one’s behaviour. Among all the types of cognitions, anticipation, planning, goal setting, evaluating and setting personal standards are the most relevant to OB. The extent of self-concept differs per culture.

The self-concept consists of:

• Self-esteem

• Self-efficacy

• Self-monitoring

• Locus of control

What is self-esteem and how can it be enhanced?

Self-esteem is the value one places on themselves. Everyone agrees that positive self-esteem is a good thing, but people disagree on how self-esteem can be improved. Self-esteem is shaped by circumstances and by the way other people treat us.

High self-esteem is generally good for people, but it can have negative effects. People with high self-esteem can be egotistical, and high levels of self-esteem are sometimes associated with aggressive and violent behaviour.

There are four possible ways to build employee self-esteem, which are:

• Be supportive by showing concern for personal problems, interests, status and contributions.

• Offer work involving variety, autonomy and challenges that suit the employee’s values, skills and abilities.

• Strive for supervisor-employee cohesiveness and build trust.

• Have faith in each employee’s self-management ability. Reward each success.

The six pillars of self-esteem are:

• Live consciously: be actively and fully engaged in what you do and with whom you interact.

• Be self-accepting: do not be overly judgemental of your thoughts and actions.

• Take personal responsibility: for your decisions and actions.

• Be self-assertive: be authentic and willing to defend your beliefs when interacting with others, rather than bending to their will to be accepted.

• Live purposefully: have clear short-term and long-term goals and realistic plans for achieving them create a sense of control.

• Have personal integrity: be true to your word and your values.

What is self-efficacy and what are its effects?

Self-efficacy is defined as ‘a person’s belief about his or her chances of successfully accomplishing a specific task.’ It refers to personal beliefs about your competencies, skills and abilities. Low self-efficacy is associated with learned helplessness, meaning the belief that one has no control over one’s environment.

There are four sources of self-efficacy beliefs, which are:

• Prior experience

• Behaviour models

• Persuasion from others

• Assessment of physical/emotional state

Actions that are part of high self-efficacy are: be active, manage the situation, set goals, plan, prepare, practice, try hard, creatively solve problems, learn from setbacks, visualise success, limit stress.

Actions that are part of low self-efficacy are: be passive, avoid difficult tasks, low commitment, don’t even try, become discouraged through setbacks, blame setbacks on lack of ability or bad luck, experience stress, become depressed, think of excuses for failing.

A possible downside of high self-efficacy is the Dunning-Kruger effect. This is when an individual is very confident in their abilities, but so unskilled that they are not aware that they are unskilled.

Self-efficacy requires the following eight actions within an organisation:

• Recruiting/selection/job assignments

• Job design: complex, challenging, autonomous

• Training and development

• Self-management

• Goal setting and quality improvement

• Coaching

• Leadership

• Rewards

What is self-monitoring?

Self-monitoring is the extent to which people observe their own self-expressive behaviour and adapt to the environment. There is a positive relationship between high self-monitoring and career success.

A possible negative image that comes with high self-monitoring can be that of an unfair person who cannot be trusted.

A possible negative image that comes with low self-monitoring can be that of a person who ignores all verbal and non-verbal communication.

According to research, there is a positive relationship between high self-monitoring and career success.

What is the locus of control?

Locus of control is the extent to which a person takes responsibility for his or her behaviour and the consequences of this behaviour. There are two types: internal and external.

• Internal: people who believe they have the capacity to influence the environment and assume that they can control events in their lives by effort and skill (passing the exam you studied a lot). Sensitive for rewards.

• External: people who believe that events in their lives and things that they want to achieve are subject to uncontrollable forces, luck, chance and powerful others (passing the exam test was easy). Not sensitive for rewards, they do want rewards but not if they have to work harder to perform better.

Internals are more inclined to influence the work situation, while externals are more likely to be satisfied with supervision.

How is personality defined and what are its components?

Personality is the combination of stable physical and mental characteristics that give the individual his or her identity. How you appear to others. It is formed by interacting genetic (nature) and environmental (nurture) influences. Traits are the characteristics of people in different situations. When categorising personality, The Big Five personality dimensions have been the most influential.

The Big Five personality dimensions are:

• Extraversion: extravert (outgoing, talkative, sociable, assertive) ↔ introvert (reserved, quiet, introverted)

• Agreeableness: adapter (trusting, good-natured, co-operative, soft-hearted, forgiving) ↔ challenger (rude, cold, uncaring, unsympathetic)

• Conscientiousness: focused (dependable, responsible, achievement-orientated, persistent) ↔ flexible (sloppy, inefficient, careless, disorganised, easily distracted)

• Emotional stability: stable (self-confident, relaxed, secure, unworried) ↔ unstable (anxious, depressed, angry, indecisive)

• Openness to experience: explorer (intellectual, imaginative, curious, broad-minded) ↔ preserver (unimaginative, conventional, habit-bound)

What are the two best known personality type theories?

Types are based on common patterns of characteristics between people. People belong to types (traits belong to people). Two important type theories are Jung's typology and Myers and Brigg's personality typology.

• Jung’s typology distinguished three dimensions

  • People’s cognitions (how people receive): sensing / intuiting

  • People’s judgements: thinking / feeling

  • People’s view of the world: extravert / introvert

• Myers and Brigg’s personality typology (MBTI) added an extra dimension

  • The choices people make on how to allocate time priorities: judging / perceiving

Those four dimensions can be combined in 16 different ways: personality types. The four types are:

• Sensing-thinking: practical, technical skills, realistic.

• Intuiting-thinking: competences, objective, logical, theoretical, technical.

• Sensing-feeling: realistic, sympathetic, friendly, theoretical, helpful.

• Intuiting-feeling: competences, personal, enthusiastic, understanding.

How are abilities and styles categorised?

An ability is a broad and stable characteristic responsible for a person’s maximum performance on mental and physical tasks.

A style is a pattern or preferred way of doing something.

A skill is the specific capacity to manipulate objects physically.

A competence is an underlying characteristic of an individual which is causally related to effective or superior performance.

There is no best style, they are just different. Competence can be more (better) or less.

Intelligence is an individual’s capacity for constructive thinking, reasoning and problem-solving. There are two theories where intelligence comes from. It can be nature, where intelligence is passed on genetically, or nurture, where the environment influences and shapes intelligence.

Two types of abilities determine all cognitive performance: a general mental ability (required for all cognitive tasks) and abilities unique to the tasks at hand.

The different kinds of mental abilities are:

• Verbal comprehension: to understand what words mean

• Word fluency: to produce isolated words

• Numerical reasoning: to make quick and accurate computations

• Spatial ability: to perceive spatial (ruimtelijke) patterns and to visualise

• Memory

• Perceptual speed: to perceive figures, identify similarities and differences, carry out tasks involving visual perception

• Inductive reasoning: to reason from specifics to general conclusions

G is a general measure of intelligence.

Intelligence can be divided in four components:

• Emotional intelligence: identifying, understanding and managing own and other's emotions.

• Cultural intelligence: recognise cultural differences and showing appropriate behaviour at multicultural situations.

• Social intelligence: effectively relating with others.

• Cognitive intelligence: mental capabilities.

What kind of psychological tests are used in the workplace?

There are two categories of psychological tests:

• Typical performance: personality tests.

• Maximum performance: intelligence test.

There are three reasons to be careful with personality tests, which are:

• Predictive validity: can a test measure work performance?

• Differential validity: are different races measured in different ways?

• Faking: in what extent does faking alters a test?

What are values, atitudes and emotions? - Chapter 3

What are values?

Values are standards or criteria for choosing goals or guiding actions that are relatively enduring and stable over time.

• Values have a content aspect: People differ in the values they think are important

• Values also have an intensity aspect: People differ in the extent of importance of those values

What is Milton Rokeach's model of instrumental and terminal values?

Instrumental values are desirable ways or modes of behaviour to reach a desirable goal. Instrumental values can be divided into moral values (interpersonal) and competence values (intrapersonal).

Terminal values are desirable goals a person wants to reach during his or her life. Terminal values can be divided into self-centred (personal) and society-centred (social).

Values are connected, work together to help people reach their desirable goals through desirable ways of behaviour.

Rokeach developed the Rokeach Value Survey to measure instrumental and terminal values.

What is the basic human values model by Schwartz?

Schwartz developed the model by Rokeach further. He distinguished 10 types of value, that are all on two dimensions: self-enhancement versus self-transcendence and openness to change versus conservation from change.

What are work values?

Work values are expressions of basic values in the work setting.

The four types of work values that Schwartz identifies are:

• Intrinsic (openness to change),

• extrinsic (conservation)

• social (self-transcendence)

• prestige values (self-enhancement).

What are attitudes?

Attitudes are beliefs and feelings people have about specific ideas, situations and people, which influence their behaviour.

Attitudes are more directed towards specific goals or situations, while values are more abstract. There are three components which clarify this difference:

• Cognitive component: beliefs, opinions, knowledge about a certain object, situation, person.

• Affective component: feelings, moods, emotions.

• Behavioural component: how a person intends or expects to act towards something or someone.

Cognitive dissonance occurs in situations where different attitudes are in conflict with each other. The purpose of cognitive dissonance is to solve, change attitude (dissonance reduction).

How do attitudes affect behaviour via intentions?

According to Fishbein and Azjen, intentions are the key to behaviour.

Azjen's theory of planned behaviour starts with three variables:

• Attitude towards behaviour

• Subjective norm

• Perceived behavioural control

All these three variables cause stronger intention to engage in certain behaviour.

The most important, work related attitudes are:

• Organisational commitment: extent to which an individual identifies oneself with the organisation and is committed to its goals.

• Job involvement: the extent to which an individual is personally involved with his or her work role. Identification with a specific job.

• Job satisfaction: the degree of fulfilment and pleasure one finds in his or her job. The general attitude towards one’s job. Sources:

• Need fulfilment

• Discrepancy: meet expectations, represent the difference between what an individual expects to receive from a job and what he or she actually receives.

• Value attainment: perception that a job allows for fulfilment of an individual’s important work values.

• Equity: how ‘fairly’ an individual is treated at work.

• Dispositional/genetic components: a function both of personal traits and genetic factors rather than the factors mentioned above.

The three most studies attitudes in organisational behaviour are organisational commitment, job involvement, and job satisfaction. Organisational commitment is the extent to which a person identifies themselves with an organisation and is committed to its goals. Job involvement is the extent to which a person is personally invovled with their work role.

What are emotions?

Emotions are complex human reactions on personal achievements and setbacks.

Emotions can be positive (goal congruent) or negative (goal incongruent).

They can have positive affectivity (experience possible emotional states) or negative affectivity (experience negative emotional states)

• Felt emotions are actual or true emotions

• Displayed emotions are organisationally desirable and appropriate emotions in a given job

What is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage your own emotions and those of others in mature and constructive ways.

The components of emotional intelligence are:

• self-awareness,

• self-management (personal)

• social awareness

• relationship management (social).

What is emotional influencing?

Emotional contagion is the process through which people catch the feeling of others. ‘The ripple effect’ uses the metaphor of water ripples caused by the wind.

There are five competences needed for the effective use of the emotions of the principle of emotional contagion:

• Influencing

• Communication: convincing

• Conflict management: negotiating + solving conflicts

• Leadership: inspiring + coaching

• Change management: communication

Emotional labour is the effort, planning and control that are needed to express organisationally desired emotions during interpersonal interactions.

Emotional dissonance is the conflict between felt and displayed emotions.

What is flow in the workplace?

Flow is a subjective psychological state that occurs when one is totally involved in an activity and feels simultaneously cognitively efficient, motivated and happy.

Csikszentmihalyi deveoped the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) to measure the quality of people's experiences. He found out there is is a similarity between the skills people think they have and the challenges they are willing to accept. Too easy challenges lead to borness and too difficult challenges lead to stress.

The five Cs to maximise flow are:

• Clarity

• Centre: an ability to focus

• Choice: belief they control their life, they have choices

• Commitment: to the activity which is needed to achieve goals

• Challenge: balance between skills and challenges

How do information and communication function in organisations? - Chapter 4

What is the organisational information flow model?

The core of the organisational information flow model is an organisational entity (an individual, group, or organisation). The entity receives outside information and uses it to make a decision. This decision is communicated to other entities. The other entity uses this communication as input and translates it to a new decision, which is communicated to the original entity and others.

What is perception?

Perception is the cognitive process that enables us to interpret and understand our environment. Perception adds meaning to the already gathered information.

Social perception is the process by which people come to understand one another.

The factors influencing perception are:

• The perceived target: why a person looks the way he does can influence perception.

  • Attention-drawing features: colour, clothing.

  • Perceptual grouping: form individual stimuli into a meaningful pattern. Continuity, closure, proximity & similarity influence perceptual grouping.

• The perceiver:

  • Personality, mood, attitudes.

  • Implicit personality theories are a network of assumptions that we hold about various types of people, traits and behaviours.

  • Confirmation bias means that we seek and interpret information that verifies existing beliefs.

• The setting: where interaction between perceiver and perceived target takes place.

  • Contrast effect is that we perceive stimuli that differ from expectations as being even more different than they really are.

  • Primacy effect is that the information first received often continues to colour later perceptions of individuals. This is also known as anchoring. Your first impression counts most.

What are agency and asymmetric information?

In communication there are two persectives: that of the perceiver and that of the communicator. As a member of an organisation, we will find ourselves in both roles.

Adverse selection is when one party in a transaction has information that the other does not have, giving the first party an advantage. There is asymmetric information.

Moral hazard or hidden action occurs when one party takes a risk and the other party carries the cost of this risk.

What are attributions?

Attributions are explanations for behaviour, based on cognitive evaluations.

Attributions are on two dimensions:

• internal versus external (whithin the actor or from external factors)
• stable versus unstable (static or dynamic in time)

What are the three most relevant attribution theories?

Correspondent inference theory describes how an alert perceiver infers another’s intentions and person dispositions from his or her behaviour.

The extent to which a person’s disposition is derived from a perceived slide of behaviour depends on:

• non-common effects

• social desirability of effects

• degree of choice.

To be the cause of behaviour it must be present when the behaviour occurs and absent when it does not. This is the covariation principle. People make inferences based on three types of information:

• External attributions: high distinctiveness (does a person react to other stimuli in the same way?)

• Internal attributions: Low distinctiveness, high consistency, low consensus

• Attribution model (attribution proces begins after an individual has completed a task)

What are attributional biases?

There are five biases which lead to wrong interpretations, which are:

• Fundamental error: inferring someone’s success to external causes and failure to internal causes.

• Defensive attribution: blame victims for their own misfortune

• Actor-observer effect: actors make different attributions about themselves compared to observers.

• Self-serving bias: inferring positive outcomes to internal factors and negative outcomes to external factors.

• Fundamental attribution error: desirable actions and behaviour are attributed to internal factors when it is made by in-group members and to external causes for out-group members.

What is sensemaking?

Sensemaking is a social process, where unexpected cues or signals from the environment are analysed, in order to understand them. There is a discrepancy between what was expected and what was observed. The sensemaking process is interative, which means that a cue comes in which prompts action, and that action creates a new cue which prompts action again. Sensemaking is not always activated, but organisations that do apply sensemaking may be able to obtain a clearer picture of what is improtant to its members.

There has been a lot of research into sensemaking concerning major disasters. This research shows that in many cases, discrepancies were explained away. Because of this, sensemaking did not take place and the disaster was allowed to happen.

How does information processing in organisations work?

The first step in information processing is social persception. It is part of a four-stage information-processing sequence. The four stages are selective attention, encoding and simplification, storage and retention, and retrieval and response.

• Stage 1: Selective attention/comprehension. Something attracts attention if there is social salience. This is determined by several factors including:
  • Novelty
  • Brightness
  • Unusual for that person
  • Unusual for a peron's social category
  • Unusual in general
  • Extremely negative or positive
  • Dominant in the visual field.
• Stage 2: Encoding and simplification. Raw information is divided into cognitive categories.
  • A schema is a person's mental picture of a particular event or type of stimulus.
  • During the encoding process, we evaluate our environment. This can vary from person to person. People have different schemata, emotions influence our interpretation, and people tend to apply recently used cognitive categories during encoding.
• Stage 3: Storage and retention.
  • Event memory is built out of categories containing information about general and specific events.
  • Semantic memory is general knowledge about the world.
• Stage 4: Retrieval and response

What is communication?

Communication is the exchange of information between a sender and a receiver, and the perception of meaning between the individuals involved. Communication competence is determined by three components: communication traits and abilities, situational facors, and the individuals involved in the interaction.

What is verbal and non-verbal communication?

Verbal communication consists of oral communication or written communication. It is conscious, clear and obeys rules.

Non-verbal communication is without spoken/written words. It is unconscious and occurs automatically.

Both must be consistent.

What is the role of active listening in communication?

Listening means actively decoding and interpreting verbal messages.

Listener comprehension is influenced by listener-, message-, speaker-, environmental characteristics.

There are three different communication styles, which are:

• Assertive: expressive, self-enhancing, not at the expense of others.

• Non-assertive: timid, self-denying.

• Aggressive: expressive, self-enhancing, at the expense of others.

What are organisational communication patterns?

• Hierarchical communication consists of exchanges of information and influence between organisational members. Communication distortion is when the content of the message is modified. Hierarchical communication can occur downwards (from supervisor to employee) or upwards (from employee to supervisor)

• The grapevine is the unofficial communication system of the informal organisation. It consists of four predictable patterns: single-strand, gossip, probability, cluster.

  • Liaison individuals can use it to leak information

  • Organisational moles can use it to enhance power and status

What are the communication differences between men and women?

Differences in communication styles can cause problems concerning productivity and communication.

• Men are too authoritarian

• Men do not take women seriously

• Women are too emotional

• Men do not accept women as co-workers or bosses

• Women do not speak up enough

Gender differences are caused by linguistic styles, which are a person’s characteristic speaking pattern.

Men use report talk, which is a direct way of communication.

Women use rapport talk which is a less direct way of communication, where everybody is involved.

Genderflex is the temporary use of communication behaviours typical of the other gender in order to increase the potential for influence.

What is the loop?

Information processing and communication exist in a loop: input creates output, and the output is input for a new cycle.

What is a perceptual process model of communication?

A perceptual process model of communication means that a receiver creates meaning in their own minds.

Sender - receiver encodes: message (contain hidden agendas, must match with the type of communication) - decoding - receiver creates meaning of message

There are two interrelated communication levels:

• Content level: what information is sent.

• Relationship level: how is information sent, based on emotional status or attitudinal reactions towards our environment.

Feedback is the receiver’s response to a message.

Noise is anything that interferes with the transmission and understanding of a messages.

What are barriers to effective communication?

There are many personal barriers to communication, such as varying levels of communication skills, stereotypes, the inability to listen with understanding, and the level of trust. In additon, there are semantic barriers, which are encoding and decoding errors.

Some simple stratiegies to improve your personal communication skills are:

• Empathy (put yourself in the shoes of another)
• Redundancy (repeat important elements)
• Effective timing (make sure your partner is not distracted)
• Descriptive (focus on the problem rather than the person)
• Feedback (check if your message has been received)
• Ask questions

Information richness means that if communication of an item of data provides substantial new understanding it is rich. The best kind of communication is face-to-face.

Information overload is when information exceeds our information processing capacity.

What are content motivation theories? - Chapter 5

What is job satisfaction?

Job satisfaction is the general attitude one has towards one's job. This is one of the attributes most frequently studied by organisational behaviour researchers.

There are 5 models of job satisfaction that specify its causes:

• Need fulfilment
• Discrepancies (satisfaction is a result of met expectations)
• Value attainment (a job allows for fulfulment of important work values)
• Equity (how fairly a person is treated at work)
• Dispositional components (job satisfaction is a product of both dispositional and genetic factors)

Some key correlates of job satisfaction are:

• Motivation - positive relationship
• Absenteeism - negative relationship
• Withdrawal cognitions (thoughts about quitting) - negative
• Turnover - negative
• job performance - positive

What is motivation?

Motivation consists of professional processes that cause goal-orientated actions.

Motivation is an element of work performance just like opportunity and ability.

There are five methods that explain behaviour and underlie theories of motivation:

• Needs theories: individuals are motivated by unsatisfied needs.

• Reinforcement theorists: people behave in a way which provides positive consequences.

• Cognition: behaviour is the result of rational decisions.

• Job characteristics model: the task itself is the key to employee motivation.

• Emotions: people strive for goals en interests.

Content theories try to explain the things that actually motivate people in their job. What motivates people?

Process theories explain the actual process of motivation. How do people get motivated?

What is Maslow’s need hierarchy theory?

Maslow's need hierarchy theory is a pyramid, where the need at the bottom needs to be fulfilled before the next one can be attained.

The levels are, from top to bottom:

• Self-actualisation: actualise one’s full potential

• Esteem: internal esteem needs (desires for feelings, power), external esteem needs (reputation, recognition) higher self-confidence

• Love: belongingness, giving and receiving

• Safety: security, need for freedom.

• Physiological needs: to sustain life, hunger, sleepiness.

There are two barriers to this theory:

• People appreciate the same needs differently.

• Employees do not always achieve their needs through work.

What is Alderfer’s ERG theory?

Alderfer's ERG theory is a refinement of Maslow’s hierarchy needs model. Five dimensions were brought back to the three following dimensions:

• Existence needs: safety, physiological

• Relatedness: to maintain relationships

• Growth-related needs: development of potential

The frustration-regression assumption posits that people may regress down to lower need level when a higher need is frustrated.

The three big differences between Maslow and ERG are:

• ERG states that more than one need can motivate at the same time. Maslow does not state this.

• ERG states a continuum (frustration-regression). Maslows hierachy theory does not.

• ERG is more consistent in individual differences.

What are McClelland’s need theories?

McClelland studied the relationship between behaviour and needs. He classified three types of needs:

• Need for achievement: need to accomplish something difficult. Characteristics: moderate risk-takers, higher personal responsibility, need for more feedback.

• Need for affiliation: maintaining social relationships, joining groups.

• Need for power: desire to influence, ‘if I win, you lose’ mentality.

What is Herzberg’s motivator-hygiene theory?

Herzberg's motivator-hygiene theory states that job satisfaction leads to better job performance.

Hygiene factors erase sources of dissatisfaction. Examples of these factors are policies, supervision, and salary. These factors are extrinsic.

Motivators foster job satisfaction. Examples of motivators are achievement, responsibility, and recognition. These factors are intrinsic.

Job enrichment means modifying a job in such a way that an employee has the opportunity to experience achievement, recognition, stimulating work, responsibility and advancement.

The internal weakness of the theories is that they do not reveal about the actual motivation process.

• People seek security

• People seek social systems

• People seek personal growth

How were need theories integrated?

Hackman and Oldham tried to determine how work can be structured so that employees are internally motivated.

The critical psychological states that are defined in their model are:

• Experienced meaningfulness: is the work valuable?

• Experienced responsibility: personal accountability for the outcomes of his or her efforts.

• Knowledge of results: able to determine whether or not the outcomes of the work are satisfactory.

This model is the opposite of Taylor and his scientific management.

Hackman and Oldham made a tool for self-reporting, in order to calculate the motivating potential score.

MPS = {(skill var. + task id. + task sign.)/3} x autonomy x feedback

Jobs with a high MPS should contain at least one of the three factors which lead to meaningfulness, have a high autonomy and a high feedback. People respond positively on jobs with a high PMS when they:

• have high knowledge and skills needed for the jobs.

• have high growth needs.

• have general satisfaction with various aspects of the work context.

What are process motivation theories? - Chapter 6

What is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Self-fulfilling prophecy describes how people behave so that their expectations come true. It is also known as the Pygmalion effect. High self-expectations lead to greater effort and better performance leads to higher expectations.

Set-up-to-fail syndrome is negative side of circle: low expectations lead to less effort. This is also known as the Golem effect.

What is the expectancy theory of motivation?

The expectancy theory is the idea that people’s actions are driven by expected consequences. Hedonism of one component of expectancy theory: Hedonistic people strive to maximise their pleasure and minimise their pain. This theory can be used to predict behaviour in any situation in which a choice between two or more alternatives must be made.

There are two theories of motivation: Victor Vroom’s expectancy theory and Lyman Porter and Edward Lawler’s extension of Vroom’s theory.

What is Vroom’s expectancy theory?

Motivation boils down to the decision about how much effort to exert in a specific task situation. Vroom’s expectancy model is structured in a three-stage sequence of expectations.

The three stages of Vroom's expectancy model are:

• Motivation is affected by an individual’s expectation that a certain level of effort will produce the intended performance goal.

• Motivation is influenced by a person’s perceived chances of getting various outcomes as a result of performing at a level, which would result in the benefits.

• Individuals are motivated to the extent that they value the outcomes receives. This means that only if the perceived value of the outcome is higher than the perceived value of the cost/effort will the effort be exerted.

Expectancy represents an individual’s belief that a particular degree of effort will be followed by a particular level of performance (effort → performance expectation). Taking the form of subjective probabilities for expectancies, zero is the perception that effort has no effort on performance and one is the perception that everything depends on effort.

The factors influencing an employee’s expectancy perceptions are:

• self-esteem

• self-efficacy

• previous success at the task

• help received from a supervisor and subordinates

• information necessary to complete the task

• goods materials/equipment to work with.

Instrumentality is a person’s belief that a particular outcome depends on performing at a specific level (performance → outcome perception). Performance is instrumental when it leads to something else (e.g. passing exams is instrumental to graduating from university).

Valence refers to the positive or negative values people place on outcomes. It mirrors our personal preferences (e.g. most employees place a positive value (valence) on receiving additional money whereas job loss would be likely to prove negatively valent for most individuals). The outcome of valence depends on an individual’s needs but the sum of the valences of all relevant outcomes has to be positive.

Even though the expectancy theory predicts some components accurately (e.g. task persistence, achievement), it has been criticised for several reasons:

• Theory is difficult to test

• Measures used to assess expectancy, instrumentality and valence have questionable validity

Expectancy theory can be useful for creating motivating working environments where people like to work and achieve high performance.

Non-challenging work leads to boredom, frustration and low performance. Too difficult tasks cause frustration as they are not attainable. It is crucial to pay attention to individual when trying to influence people’s expectancies.

As the expectancy theory is based on perceptions, motivation decisions should not be cased on manager’s view of abilities.

Organisations also have to deal effectively with employees’ instrumentalities to enhance motivation; trust and honesty are important aspects of organizations that are valued by employees. Organisations have to monitor valences for various rewards.

The concept of instrumentality is applied in the concept of performance-related pay (PRP), referred to as pay-for-performance. The idea behind pay-for-performance schemes is to give employees an incentive for working harder or smarter; it is something extra.

What is the equity theory of motivation?

The Equity Theory is a model of motivation that explains how people strive for fairness and justice in social exchanges. This theory is based on cognitive dissonance theory (developed by Leon Festinger in 1950s). Equity theory focuses on what people are motivated to do when they feel treated inequitable.

According to his theory people are motivated to maintain consistency between their cognitive beliefs and their behaviour, and perceived inconsistencies create cognitive dissonance/psychological discomfort that motivates corrective action

The three components are important for application of this theory are:

• Awareness of the major components of the individual-organisation exchange relationship, which are inputs and outputs.

• This relationship is important for giving the employees the idea of what is equity and inequity.

• The equity theory focuses on what people are motivated to do when they feel like they are treated unfair and want to reduce this inequity.

When making an equity comparison, employees consider on-the-job inputs and outcomes. There are three equity relationships: equity, negative inequity and positive inequity. When two people have equivalent backgrounds and perform the same tasks, equity exists for an individual when the ratio of perceived outcomes to inputs equals the ratio of outcomes to inputs. However, if the individual enjoys greater outcomes for similar inputs, is it called negative inequity. On the other hand, the individual perceives positive inequity when the outcome to input ratio is greater than of the other person.

There are two key findings on the equity theory of motivation in organisations:

• Negative inequity is less tolerable than positive inequity. People who feel a negative inequity are more powerfully motivated to correct the situation.

• Inequity can be reduced in several ways, such as increasing or decreasing input, leaving the field or changing their comparison other.

The following tendencies influence combinations of behaviour and cognitive adjustments:

• People will try to maximise the amount of positive outcomes he or she receives.

• People do not want increasing inputs when it costs too much effort or costs.

• People do not want behavioural or cognitive changes in inputs which are crucial to their self-concept or self-esteem.

• People are more likely to change cognitions about the comparison person's inputs and outputs than than changing cognitions about themselves.

• People only leave the field when the inequity cannot be resolved through other methods.

Individuals tend to compare themselves with similar others or close friends rather than dissimilar ones. Further, men and women have the same reaction to negative inequity.

How can equity be maintained?

To maintain feelings of equity in organisations, the following aspects should be considered:

• Managing job behaviour needs understanding of cognitive processes

• It is important to pay attention to employees’ perception on what is fair and equitable

• Hiring and promotion decisions based on merit-based and job-related information is seen as equitable

• Having the ability to appeal against any decision promotes the belief that organizations treat employees fairly

• Equity outcomes makes employees being more likely to accept and support organizational change

• Organizations can promote teamwork among employees by treating them equitably

• Treating employees inequitably leads to conflicts

• The organization’s climate should be for justice as it significantly influences employees’ job satisfaction.

How does motivation through goal setting work?

A goal is what an individual is trying to accomplish or an action or object someone is aiming for. Goal setting has been promoted through management by objectives (MBO). It is an approach that includes participation in decision-making, goal setting and objective feedback.

Locke’s Model of Goal Setting involves the following four motivational mechanisms:

• Goals are personally meaningful and direct one’s attention on what is relevant and important

• Goals motivate us to act so that the level of effort expended proportionately to the difficulty of the goal

• The effort expended on a task over an extended period of time is represented by persistence

• Goals can encourage people to develop strategies and action plans enabling them to achieve their goals

In general, goal setting works in different cultures even though goal specificity and difficulty vary between cultures.

Goal difficulty reflects the amount of effort requited to meet a goal. There is a positive correlation between goal difficulty and performance but as the goal seems impossible to reach, the performance drops . Goal specificity pertains to the quantifiability of a goal, which refers to the extent to which a goal is specifically stated and specified. Setting specific, difficult goals leads to poorer performance. There are two explanations:

• Employees are not likely to make an increased effort to achieve complex goals unless they support them

• Novel and complex tasks take employees longer to complete

Further, feedback lets people know if they are going in the right direction. It provides the information needed to adjust direction, effort and strategies for goal accomplishment. Hence, goals pus feedback is the recommended approach.

The contingency approach is a method that seems best suited to the individual and situation. Individual differences make it necessary to establish different goals for employees performing the same job.

Goal specificity refers to the quantifiability of a goal. This means the extent to which the goal is specified.

Goal-commitment is the extent to which an individual is personally committed to achieving a goal. It affects the goal-setting outcomes by both strengthen the intention and lower the unwillingness to reach a goal over time.

There are a number of sources that can be used as input for goal-setting:

• Time and motion studies

• Average past experience

• Employee and his/her superior may set the goal participatively through give-and-take negotiation

• Conducting external or internal benchmarking (used when an organisation wants to compare its performance or internal work processes with those of other organisations or other internal units, departments within the organisation)

• Strategy of company may affect the goals set by employees at various level within the organisation

What are SMART goals?

Goals must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Result- oriented, and Time bound (SMART). When people have multiple goals, goal conflict may arise. Goal conflict refers to degree to which people feel that multiple goals are incompatible.

There are three types of goal conflicts:

• Externally imposed goal my be in conflict with a personal goal

• People have to achieve multiple outcomes when performing a single tasks leading to trade-off between performance quality and quantity

• Several tasks or goals have to accomplished

Goal setting only works when people are committed to the goals established. Higher goal commitment can be achieved by understanding the goals.

What is the best way to give and receive feedback?

Feedback serves the following to two functions: It is instructional and motivational. Feedback instructs when it clarifies roles and motivates when it serves as a reward.

To better understand the feedback-performance relationship, the cognitive-processing model of feedback can be used. The sources of giving feedback are ‘others’, the task itself and ‘oneself’. People who tend to be high in self-confidence rely more on personal feedback than those with low self-confidence.

The recipient who gets feedback differs in character, perception and cognitive evaluation. The recipient’s character (self-esteem and self-efficacy) can help or hinder one’s readiness for feedback. Others having low self-esteem and self-efficacy do not seek for feedback. High self-monitors are more open to feedback whereas high self-monitors are tuned into their own internal feelings. The perception can be perceived in a positive or negative way. Research shows that negative feedback can be seen as a challenge and set higher goals whereas positive feedback can less motivate to do better. However, destructive criticism can reduce the beliefs of self-efficacy and self-set goals of recipients.

When receiving feedback, people evaluate it based on several aspects (accuracy, credibility of the source, fairness, expectancies and behavioural standards). If one or more of these cognitive criteria are failed to meet the feedback it will be played down.

As feedback is related to the goal-setting process it comes to the same behavioural outcomes: direction, effort and persistence and resistance.

What are upward and 360-degree feedback?

The 360-degree feedback and upward feedback are newer approaches as they involve multiple sources of feedback. Nowadays, more and more employees receive feedback from subordinates or even outsiders, which covers all relevant stakeholders in an employee’s performance (‘360-degree’). However, when customers are not included it is described as 270-degree feedback. The popularity for even subordinates giving ‘upward’ feedback’ to his or her boss has grown for at least six reasons:

• Traditional performance-appraisal systems created dissatisfaction

• The trend to team-based organizations instead of traditional hierarchies

• ‘Multiple raters’ are considered to be more valid feedback than single-source rating

• Support of computer network technology facilitates multiple-rater systems

• Trend towards participative management and employee empowerment

• Co-workers are said to know more about a professional’s strengths than the boss

Studies have shown that upward feedback had a positive impact on the performance of low to moderate performers. Further, repeated upward feedback had a lasting positive effect on performance. Both 360-degree and upward feedback may be a motivational tool as the feedback based on anonymity is decoupled from pay and promotion decision. Developing effective 360-degree programmes is not easy as several interconnected steps need to be involved. In table 6.6 the organisational conditions for 360-degree feedback are summarised.

What are organisational reward systems?

Rewards are an omnipresent feature of organisational life. But rewards go far beyond monetary compensation. Hence, there are different reward systems that are similar to each other on some interrelated common components.

There are three different types of rewards:

• financial/material (extrinsic)

• social (extrinsic)

• psychic (intrinsic)

Whereas social rewards involve praise and recognition from others psychological rewards come from personal feelings of self-esteem, self-satisfaction and accomplishment.

In general, extrinsic rewards (money or praise) come from the environment and intrinsic rewards (pleasure from a task) are self-granted. If an employee obtains extrinsic rewards he gets extrinsic motivated just like intrinsic rewards turn to an intrinsic motivated employee. In cultural context, however, intrinsic job characteristics are only high valued in rich countries with lower power distance and an individualistic culture.

What are organisational reward norms?

Besides the different types of rewards, four organisation’s reward norms dictate the nature of exchange:

• Profit maximisation: The objective to maximise its net gain in a selfish way. A profit-maximising employee would thereby seek maximum rewards and even leave the organisation for a better deal

• Equity: The reward equity norm says that rewards should be in proportion to contributions. It is the most common phenomenon in cultures. The equity norm is driven by basic principles of fairness and justice but its cultural strength varies.

• Equality: The reward equality norm is about rewarding all parties equally without considering their comparative contributions. As there is not absolute equality in hierarchical organisations, the gap between high-level and low-level employees is from importance. The smaller the pay gap, the better the individual and organisational performance.

• Need: This norm states that distributing rewards should be according to employee’s need rather than their contributions.

The individual preference for reward-allocation norms and the social, cultural and political-economic context when implementing a reward system might enhance people’s job satisfaction and motivation.

What are reward distribution criteria?

There are three general criteria for the distribution of rewards:

• Performance in terms of result (tangible outcomes)

• Performance in terms of actions and behaviours

• Non-performance consideration (where is type of job is rewarded)

Sometimes organisational reward systems do not achieve the desired motivational impact.

Financial rewards have an impact on the performance in three different ways:

• Motivational: the sense that rewards make people try harder

• Sending signals: paying an extra payment when the target is reached

• ‘Worker sorting’ effect: organizations using rewards extensively tend to attract people valuing such rewards.

There are several issues to consider when deciding on the right balance between monetary and non-monetary rewards:

• Employees value interesting work and recognition more than money

• Extrinsic rewards can lose their motivating factor over time

• Monetary rewards must be large enough to generate motivation

Pay should not be linked to goal achievement unless the performance goals are under the employees’ control, the goals are quantitative and measurable and large payments are made for performance achievement.

What are groupdynamics? - Chapter 7

What are groups?

Groups and teams are an inescapable feature in our everyday life. The term ‘group’ can be defined as two or more freely interacting individuals who share collective norms and goals and have a common identity

Work teams, subparts of departments or other informal associations among organisational members are by definition a group.

The psychologist Rensis Likert views organisations as a collection of groups rather than individuals. According to Likert, groups have a psychological function and are more productive if they satisfy individual’s needs.

What is the difference between formal and informal groups?

A formal group is formed by the organisation to help the organisation to accomplish a goal (e.g. work groups, team, committee). Functional reporting between subordinates and group managers is one characteristic of a command or functional group. The aim of a task group is to complete a particular task for a limited time. In organisations, employees can belong to a command group and to at least one task group.

An informal group evolves naturally and is not created on purpose by an organisation. There are two specific types of informal groups: friendship groups and interest groups.

Whereas friendship groups arise from common characteristics of people (age, ethnic background), interest groups develop because of a common interest or activity they belong to. Formal and informal groups often overlap which may be problematic as it can foster the productive teamwork on the job but also threaten the productivity by ‘gossip’.

Groups fulfill two basic functions: organisational and functional. The social identity theory states that these functions are defined by personal social affiliations: Groups that are similar to ourselves reinforce the personal social identity and motivate the individual to belong to that group.

What are social networks?

Social networks are social entities and the relations between them. They differ from groups or teams as they have no clear boundaries. Social networks or ‘shadow organisations’ can emerge in a given company or be prescribed.

In the field of research the social network analysis is a systematic and quantifiable collection and analysis of social relations. Emerged in the 1930s, the method has developed through the insights of statistics, social-psychology and sociology. The sociogram is one output of a social network analysis. It concerns with the structure and patterning of relationships and identifies their causes and consequences. There are different types of individuals that can be identified:

• Star (individual having large number of relations)

• Isolate (individuals having no relations)

• Bridge builder (individual connecting parts of the network)

What is Tuckman’s group development and formation process?

Groups and teams go through a maturation process in identifiable stages. The psychologist Bruce W. Tuckman proposed in 1977 the five-stage model, which is akin to Maslow’s need hierarchy model.

• Stage 1: Forming: Group members are uncertain and anxious about their roles. The mutual trust is low. If formal leader does not assert his/her authority, another leader emerges.

• Stage 2: Storming: This is the time of testing the leader’s policies. Subgroups are shaped that can lead to procrastination. Some groups may stay in the second stage due to eruptions turning into rebellion

• Stage 3: Norming: Power struggles are resolved as the new respected member becomes the leader. Questions about authority and power are resolved and team spirit develops. Members have found their proper roles.

• Stage 4: Performing: The activity is focused on task problems. The climate is characterised by open communication, strong cooperation and helping behaviour. Instead of conflicts and job boundary disputes, the members are cohesive and personal committed to group goals.

• Stage 5: Adjourning: The work is done so that members feel a compelling sense of loss

There are rituals celebrating the “end” or “new beginning”. Leaders emphasis the valuable lessons learn in group dynamics. Everyone gained new experiences.

Evidence has shown that Tuckmans’s performing stage, in what researchers called group decay, can be subdivided into:

• De-norming: different standard of conduct towards the project among the members as their interest and expectation change

• De-storming: Whereas sudden conflicts arise in the storming stage, slowly discontent comes up during the de-storming stage

• De-forming: Work groups falls apart in subgroups. Group members isolate themselves from each other. As a result, performance declines rapidly.

A study concludes the following about group development:

• Interpersonal feedback increases as the group develops through succeeding stages and becomes more specific during the group development.

• Positive feedback increases and negative feedback declines as the group expands.

• As the group develops, the interpersonal feedback gets more precise.

• Further, the credibility of peer feedback increases as well as the amount of positive feedback.

In the early group development stages active, aggressive and task-oriented leadership behaviour are related to strong functioning. Supportive, decentralised and participative behaviour, on the other hand, leads to poorer functioning but lead to more productivity and satisfaction throughout the life of the group.

What are roles?

Roles are sets of behaviour that people expect of occupants of a position. Role theory attempts to explain how these social expectations influence employee behaviour

A role episode is composed of a snapshot of the ongoing interaction between two people. At the beginning of any role episode, the role sender perceives the relevant organization’s or group’s behaviour requirements that serve as a standard for formulation expectations for the focal person’s behaviour. Then, the role sender evaluates the action behaviour of the focal person’s behaviour against those expectations followed by verbal and non-verbal messages. The focal person accurately or inaccurately perceives the communicated role expectations, which can be experienced as role overload, role conflict and role ambiguity. Then the focal person responds constructively by engaging.

Roles overload occurs as the total of what role senders expect of the focal person far exceeds his or her ability. Role conflict is experienced when various members of the role set expect various things of the focal person. This may be also the case when values, ethics or personal standards collide with others’ expectations.

Those who do not know what is expected of them experience role ambiguity. It can foster job dissatisfaction, cause lack in self-confidence and hamper job performance.

Task roles enable the work group to pursue a common purpose while maintenance roles keep the group together. Task and maintenance roles that need to be performed by group members include suggesting new goals for an initiator, and keeping the group headed towards its stated goal for the orienter.

What are norms?

Norms are shared attitudes, opinions, feelings or actions that guide social behaviour. They evolve due to psychological and sociological mechanisms and have a powerful influence on group and organisational behaviour.

Norms develop in the following four ways:

• Explicit statements by supervisors or co-workers

• Critical events in the group’s history

• Primacy

• Carry-over behaviours from past situations

Group members enforce norms for the following four reasons:

• Group/organisation survive

• Clarification of behavioural expectations

• Avoidance of embarrassment

• Clarification of central values/unique identity

Two different approaches determine the optimum group size: mathematical modelling and laboratory simulations.

The first approach, the mathematical modelling, includes building around certain desired outcomes of group action (e.g. decision quality). But this research is inconclusive due to differing assumptions and statistical techniques.

The second approach, the laboratory simulations, assumes that group behaviour needs to be observed first in controlled laboratory settings. This studies exploit that brainstorming productivity of ideas does not increase as the size of the group increases.

What effect do group size and composition have on goal attainment?

In general, the group size depends on the organisation’s objective. While a three- to five –member group would be appropriate to make high-quality decisions, a larger group could generate creative ideas and socialise new members. According to studies, the increase in group size leads to more directive group leaders and decreasing group member satisfaction.

Further, it was found that diverse dyads performed better than homogeneous sensing dyads that work on a complex task. However, that was the case when comparing them with homogeneous intuiting dyads. Several studies reveal that task-related diversity leads to greater effectiveness whereas relations-oriented diversity (e.g. gender, age) even inhibits effectiveness. Diversity may increase the knowledge pool but too much heterogeneity can make the communication between team members difficult.

What are the main threats to group effectiveness?

The three major threats to group effectiveness are the Asch effect, groupthink and social loafing. Even though conformity to norms, role expectations, policies and rules need to be established in an organisation, there are two drawbacks: First, the pressure to conform suppresses creativity and influences members concerning their attitudes that are not of any organisational need. Second, blind conformity destroys creative thinking.

What is the Asch effect?

The psychologist Solomon Asch has shown in his study that naive subjects conform to 80 % to a majority opinions that is obviously wrong. He called the distortion of individual judgment by a unanimous but incorrect opposition the Asch effect.

What is group think?

Unlike Asch’s subjects, who are strangers to each other, members of groups involved in groupthink are tightly cohesive. It is the mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group and is a deterioration of mental efficiency that results from pressures. The symptoms of group think are:

• Invulnerability

• Inherent mortality

• Rationalisation

• Stereotyped views of opposition

• Self-censorship

• Illusion of unanimity

• Peer pressure

• Mind guards

What is social loafing?

The last threat to group effectiveness is social loafing which refers to the tendency for individual effort to decline as group size increases. There are four explanations for the social loafing effect:

• Equity of effort

• Loss of personal accountability

• Motivational loss due to sharing rewards

• Co-ordination loss as more people perform the task

Laboratory studies have shown that social loafing occurs when the task is perceived to be unimportant or simple, group members thought their individual output is not identifiable and when members expect their co-workers to loaf. The following measures help to prevent social loafing:

• All the members should have the role to evaluate the work.

• Policy committees should not rubber-stamp decisions that have earlier been made.

• To announce new perspectives, external experts and subgroup debates should be applied.

• Use the devil's advocate when important issues are discussed.

• Each group member should re-evaluate the decisions made.

How do teams and teamwork operate in organisations? - Chapter 8

What are teams?

The term ‘Team’ is defined as a small number (between 2-25 members) of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. The following conditions apply to a team: members of the group have shared goals and interact with each other to achieve those goals. Moreover, team members have well-defined and interdependent roles and an organisational function as team.

As organisations want to use effectively talents to improve performance of all groups, the contingency model for staffing work teams would be appropriate. The contingency model states that if talent is spread around, new talent should be trained. If talent is concentrated, the performance of the best groups should be maximised.

What are team roles?

Within every team are different roles with its positive qualities and allowable weaknesses in order to be successful. Meredith Belbin identified in her framework nine roles that can be classified into do-roles, think-rolesand social roles. In creative groups there is a balance of all these roles that are complementary to each other.

Michael J. Stevens and Michael A. Campion developed a model for assessing one’s readiness for teamwork as also organisations need to make sure teams are staffed with skilled people. Interpersonal KSAs (the right Knowledge, Skills and Abilities) and the Self-management KSAs are divided up. The KSAs that are interpersonal are conflict resolution, collaborative problem solving and communication. The other KSAs that are involved in self-management are goal setting and performance management and planning and task co-ordination. Team-oriented organisations need to keep in mind to consider these KSAs when recruiting, hiring, staffing and training. But this alone is not enough: other characteristics such as personality also facilitate team functioning.

What types of teams are there?

Erik Sundstrom developed the general typology of work teams and identified four general types of work teams: advice, production, project and action teams. Further, he examined these types by means of four key variables: the degree of technical specialisation and of co-ordination with other work units, work cycles and typical outputs.

Advice teams are formed to broaden the information base for decisions. They tend to have a low degree of technical specialisation and co-ordination. The second type of team, production teams, perform day-to-day operations, have a low degree of technical specialisation but a high degree of co-ordination as work flows from one team to another. Project teams, on the other hand, have a high degree of technical specialisation as they are specialised in that field. The degree of co-ordination is low for traditional units but high for cross-functional units. The last type of teams, action teams, have a high degree of technical specialisation and co-ordination. The only challenge for those teams is to perform at its peak on demand.

Why don't teams achieve their goals?

However, 80% to 100% of teams have difficulties in achieving their goals. That may have the following reasons:

• Hidden agendas

• Lack of understanding and/or leadership

• Wrong mix of team members

• Unhealthy team environment

The main threats to team effectiveness are unrealistic expectations leading to frustration, which, in turn, encourages people to abandon teams. Further, the common management mistakes involve doing a poor job of creating a supportive environment for teamwork.

Studies have shown that co-operation is superior to competition and to individualistic efforts in promoting achievement and productivity. Further, co-operation with intergroup competition promotes lower achievement and productivity.

What is team building?

Team building is a term for many techniques aimed at improving the internal functioning of work teams. They strive for greater cooperation, better communication and less dysfunctional conflict. Team building gives team members the possibility to struggle with simulated or real-life problems. Analysing the outcomes can then determine on how to improve the team processes.

The four purposes of team building according to Richard Beckhard are:

• to set goals

• to analyse the way work is performed

• to examine the way a group is working and its processes

• to examine relationships among the people

An analysis of a survey states that high-performance teams have the following eight attitudes: Participative leadership, sharing responsibility, aligned on purpose, good communication, future focused, focused on task, creative talents and rapid response.

Self-management leadership is the process of leading others to lead themselves. It is assumed that self- managed teams fail if team members are not taught to engage in self-management behaviours. Hence, transition training that engages managers in self-management leadership behaviours, is necessary. There are six aspects of self-management leadership behaviour to develop team members’ self-management skills:

• Encourages self-reinforcement
• Encourages self-observation
• Encourages self-expectation
• Encourages self-goal-setting
• Encourages rehearsal
• Encourages self-criticism

teach others to appreciate and motivate themselves, ask others to keep track of their own progress and expect much from themselves. Further, managers should expect team members to practice their skills and be critical of their own performance. Hence, instead of domination, empowerment is the primary goal.

How can effective teamwork be achieved through co-operation, trust and cohesiveness?

The three most important components of teamwork are co-operation, trust and cohesiveness.

Co-operation occurs when individual efforts are integrated to achieve a collective objective. Morton Deutch showed how people’s beliefs are related to their interdependence: when acting in co-operation, people believe that goal attainment by other people will also foster their own goals but, in turn, believe that goal attainment by others will diminish their own when they are in competition. Hence, team members are in a ‘mixed motive’s situation.

Trust is the reciprocal (give-and-take) faith in other’s intentions and behaviour. The personality trait called propensity to trust includes one’s general willingness to trust others and is an element of organisational trust model. Trust involves a cognitive leap that is based on beyond the actual experience with another person. To trust someone means to have faith in somebody’s good intentions. However, the act of trusting someone also carries risks of betrayal.

There are six guidelines for building and maintaining trust:

• Communication: Tell the trust by informing team members and employees

• Support: Provide any help and be approachable/available

• Respect: Delegate authority and listen actively to others’ ideas

• Fairness: Ensure that appraisals and evaluations are objective and impartial

• Predictability: Keep to promises and be consistent and predictable

• Competence: show your competences of good business sense

Cohesiveness is the process of togetherness. Team members that are cohesive stick together for the following reasons: the enjoyableness each others’ company and the need to accomplish a common goal. There are two types of cohesiveness:

• Socio-emotional cohesiveness: this type of togetherness develops when individuals derive emotional satisfaction from team participation

• Instrumental cohesiveness: this type of togetherness develops when team members are mutually dependent on one another as they do not believe in achieving the team’s goal alone

There is evidence to the connection between team cohesiveness and performance: In smaller cohesive teams the performance effect was strong. This effect becomes even stronger in military groups and sport teams. Further, this has also the most powerful impact on the commitment to the task. Regarding the performance, the tendency for success rather binds team members together.

However, cohesiveness does not minimise friction. To conclude, enhancing group performance is not likely to be effective by fostering interpersonal attraction.

Steps managers can take to enhance the two types of cohesiveness include:

• Keep the team relatively small
• Encourage interaction and co-operation
• Emphasize members' common characteristics and interests
• Regularly update and clarify the team's goals
• Recognise and quitable reinforce every member's contributions

How do teams in action work?

The three approaches to teams in action are:

• quality circles,
• virtual teams
• and self-managed teams.

All have recognisable labels, some research evidence and range from low to high degrees of empowerment. The three types of teams are distinct but still overlap somehow.

What are quality circles?

In general, quality circles are also called parallel structures as they exist outside normal channels of authority and communication. On the other hand, self-managed teams are integrated into the organisational structure whereas virtual teams tend to be parallel.

Quality circles consist of small teams of people who work in the same field of activity and identify, analyse and recommend solution for problems. They (10-12 members) meet on regular basis during work hours once a week or twice a month. Management supports the quality circle programme by additional training. Not monetary rewards but intrinsic motivation is the primary reward for quality circle volunteers.

In the field of research, one expert made the conclusion that about 60% of quality circles failed due to poor implementation. However, the lack of standardised variables makes research on quality circle inconclusive.

What are virtual teams?

Virtual teams contain of individuals across various boundaries using the communication technology. They may be defined as a physically dispersed task team that conducts its business through modern information technology.

Whereas the spatial distance in virtual teams is distributed and the communication is mediated technologically, traditional team’s distance is proximal and the communication takes place in face-to-face meetings. In the dynamic global environments, virtual teams are beneficial due to flexibility, lower costs and improved resource utilisation. However, the lack of face-to-face interaction can weaken trust, communication and accountability that can lead to low individual commitment, role overload, role ambiguity, absenteeism and social loafing. The flow of conversation is in virtual teams disturbed because communication modalities (para-verbal and non-verbal) cannot be mediated. Further, difficulty in communication and understanding the salience of information and in interpreting the meaning of silence can cause problems. Hence, those teams are more task-oriented and less in the exchange of social-emotional information. To prevent geographical and organisational distance, trust that is not based on strong interpersonal relationships had to be established. The so-called ‘swift’ trust develops on social bonds formed by informal chats. Virtual teams that started with low levels of trust had a lack of social introduction, concern with technical uncertainties and a lack of enthusiasm whereas high level of trust showed high enthusiasm and extensive social dialogue. Repairing broken trust after a conflict between virtual team members is the most critical role for the e-team leader.

Research has proven that the group development in virtual teams is similar to that for face-to-face teams. However, virtual teams yield poorer decisions than face-to-face meetings. The team members in face-to-face groups, moreover, are more satisfied with the team’s outcome but the effectiveness of information exchange is the same in virtual and face-to-face teams. Team leaders in virtual teams need to consider two things to be effective: focus on results and recognise that virtual teams require better supervisory skills among existing managers.

What are self-managed teams?

Self-managed teams are groups of workers that are given ‘administrative oversight’ such as planning, monitoring and staffing for their task domains. Those work groups supervise themselves and are referred to autonomous work groups are self-directed work groups.

Team members of self-managed teams share or rotate leadership and hold themselves mutually responsible. The former manager starts as a team leader and is responsible for keeping the project on track. During the team maturation, the former manager acts more as coach but remains member of the team. To determine whether on-the-job training and coaching is necessary, the team members measure their progress against the agreed-upon goals, approach, skills and competences. The most delegated tasks among companies with self-managed teams are work scheduling and dealing directly with customers.

Self-managed groups are a British concept from the 1940s that is often in place in Australia, Scandinavia, USA and the Netherlands. Team members of self-managed teams score high on group autonomy that empowers those who are able to handle additional responsibility. Group autonomy comprises three types: work method autonomy, work scheduling autonomy and work criteria autonomy.

Studies concluded that self-managed teams positively affect productivity and specific attitudes such as responsibility and control but negatively affect general attitudes and absenteeism. Other studies searched out that disciplinary actions must be handled by a group consensus and that group cohesiveness lead to higher performance. Further, societal values and personality need to be taken in consideration when implementing self-managed teams in multinational companies. The approach to better build a new production around self-managed teams than convert an existing one is called ‘greenfield sites’. However, most organisations cannot afford to apply to the Greenfield opportunities. As the organisational already adjusted to clear leadership it, in addition, is difficult to employ self-managed teams. Structural redesign is necessary to make the self-managed team be a part of the organisation. To encourage the new self-managed teamwork, goal setting and rewards need to be adapted.

How does decision-making work? - Chapter 9

Decision-making is important for two reasons:

• The quality of decision affects career opportunities, rewards and job satisfaction.

• Decisions can conduce to success or failure of an organisation.

Decision-making includes the identification solutions and choosing of one that leads to a desired state of affairs.

What difference does decision speed make?

According to Daniel Kahneman, there are two types of thinking, fast (system1) or slow (system 2).

Fast thinking, or system 1 refers to the decisions and reactions that people form directly after receiveing the information they are reacting to. It is the kind of thinking that happens automatically and requires little effort.

Slow thinking, or system 2 refers to conscious, effortful thinking. This kind of thinking requires attention. Because of the effort required, the brain wants to slip back into system 1 thinking which can lead to mistakes.

What are the models of decision-making?

There are several models of decision-making: The rational-, Carnegie, Incrementalist, ‘Garbage can’, and the Unstructured model.

What is the rational model?

The rational model describes the usage of a rational, four-step sequence when making decisions: identify the problem, generate solutions, select one solution and implement/evaluate it. The decision-maker is objective and possesses all the information needed to make the decision.

The first step, the problem, occurs when the actual situation differs from the desired situation. An expert proposed to use one of the following methods to identify problems:

• Historical cues: it assumes that the recent past is the best estimate of the future. Managers, hence, should rely on the past experience to identify future problems. Nevertheless, this method is highly subjective.

• Planning approach: This method is more systematic and more accurate by using projections to evaluate the future.

• Scenario technique: Based on environmental conditions, it is used to identify the future by setting up different scenarios. This way companies can devise alternative strategies to survive in various circumstances.

• Perception of others

The second step is to generate solutions. Decisions that are made routinely (every day basis), rules for decision are formed (‘decision rules’). Otherwise, novel and unstructured decisions must be made.

Then, decision-makers select one solution that maximises the expected utility of the outcome. Other alternatives will be evaluated and judged according to standards or criteria. Once the solution is chosen, it will be implemented. Managers should try to avoid the three managerial tendencies that reduce the effectiveness of implementing solutions (see Table 13.1). It is necessary to understand, accept and motivate others. After implementation, the solution will be evaluated on its effectiveness. If the difference between the actual and the desired states are not reduced, the implementation was unsuccessful so that one of the four steps was wrongly performed.

The rational model is based on optimising (the aim to solve problems by means of the best possible solution). It assumes that managers have complete knowledge of all possible alternatives and its consequences. Further, optimising assumes managers to be well-organised and the ability to compare consequences and to determine the most preferred one.

What is the Carnegie decision-making framework?

The Carnegie model, named after the Carnegie Institute of Technology, attempts to identify the process managers use when making decisions. This process is constrained by a decision-maker’s bounded rationality, meaning that decision-makers are restricted by constraints when making decisions. These constraints have personal or environmental characteristics that reduce the rational decision-making. Unlike the rational model, the Carnegie model is characterised by limited information processing. Hence, the optimal not complete amount of information is used.

The constraints of bounded rationality (e.g. limited capacity of the human mind) cause decision-makers to fail to evaluate all potential alternatives. In addition, judgemental heuristics (=rules of thumbs) can reduce information processing demand. It helps decision-makers to reduce the uncertainty in the decision-making process as it represents the knowledge gained from past experiences. However, systematic errors may lower the quality of decisions. There are two common categories of heuristics: the available heuristic and the representativeness heuristic.

Satisficing means to meet some minimum qualifications by choosing a solution. It produces satisfactory solutions that are ‘good enough’.

The decisions made are subject to satisficing and heuristics by the organisation. The Carnegie model adapts to environmental uncertainty but remain rational thinking with a set of constraints.

What is the incrementalist model?

The Incrementalist model, developed in the 1950s by Charles Lindblom, is about selecting those actions that differ slightly from the previously done. Small changes reduce the risk of doing something fatally wrong as well as the costs. This model is referred to as ‘muddling through’. This model assumes that information is incomplete beyond the immediate future. Hence, the model can deal with moderate uncertainty.

What is the 'garbage can' model?

The ‘Garbage can’ model assumes that organisational decision making result from complex interaction between problems, solutions, participants and choice opportunities. These independent streams interact with each other but are not related.

Problems are the gap between an actual and a desired situation but are independent from solutions. Solutions are the answers for questions that are represented as ideas. They occur when people have an idea of what they can get. Participants are members that dwell on the organisation. They contribute values, experiences an attitudes to the garbage can but are limited by time pressures. Choice opportunities are occasions in which organisations make their decisions.

This model does not follow a rational process but implies that decision-making is more a function of chance encounters. Only when all four streams of events connect a decision is made. However, these connections occur randomly and decision quality generally depends on timing.

The Garbage Can model has four practical implications:

• Many decisions are made by oversight of a salient opportunity

• Political motives guide the process by which participants make decisions

• The process is sensitive to load

• Important problems are more likely to be solved that unimportant ones

What is the unstructured model of decision-making?

The Unstructured model of decision making, proposed by Henry Mintzberg, follows three stages: identification, development and selection. Identification is the ability to sport changes that will necessitate decisions. Development seeks alternatives and tries to develop them. In the last stage, selection, managers arrive at the final decision by mixing judgement, negotiation and analysis. It mixes elements and it thus better suited to high uncertainty.

What are the dynamics of decision-making?

There are three dynamic aspects of decision-making: contingency considerations, decision-making styles and the problem of decision biases.

The contingency model for selecting decision strategies has three approaches at choice: aided-analytic, unaided-analytic and non-analytic. People using the aided-analytic strategy systematically use tools to analyse and evaluate alternatives.

When systematically comparing alternatives, the decision-maker uses an unaided-analytic strategy. The non-analytical strategy, however, is about using a simple rule formulated beforehand to make the decision. The characteristics of the decision task (divided into specific problem and environment) and those of the decision-maker determine which approach to use. The greater the demands and constraints the decision-maker encounters, the higher the probability of using the aided-analytic approach. This approach helps individuals to make more consistent decisions in less predicable and unstable situations. Research proved that aided-analytic strategies are more used by competent and motivated individuals.

In choosing one of these strategies, decision-makers must make a compromise between their desire to make correct decisions and the amount of time they want to spend on the decision-making process. Whereas analytical strategies are more likely used for irreversible problems, the non-analytic method is used for problems in which the decision can be reversed.

What are the general decision-making styles?

A decision-making style reflects the combination of the individual’s perception and comprehension and the general manner someone chooses to respond. This model is based on two different dimensions: value orientation and tolerance for ambiguity.

Value orientation is the extent to which an individual focuses on tasks and technical concerns or people and social concerns when making decisions. The other dimension, tolerance for ambiguity, is the extent to which a person needs structure in his or her life.

The combination of these two dimensions forms four styles of decision –making: directive, analytical, conceptual and behavioural. People that use the directive style have a low tolerance for ambiguity and are oriented towards tasks and technical concerns. The action-oriented and decisive style is used to focus on facts. Individuals tend to be autocratic, exercise power and focus on the short run when applying this decision-making style. The analytical style has higher tolerance for ambiguity and tends to consider more alternatives than do directives. They are careful decision-makers that respond later but well to uncertain situations. People using the conceptual style have a high tolerance for ambiguity and tend to focus on the social aspects of a work situation. They like to consider many options and adopt a long-term perspective. Further, they rely rather on intuition and are good at finding creative solutions. Those people are willing to take risks but this style, on the other hand, can foster an indecisive approach to decision-making. The last decision-making style, the behavioural, focuses the most on the people aspect of decisions. They like social interactions in which opinions are exchanged.

How does knowing the decision-making styles help you?

The knowledge of decision-making styles can be used in three ways:

• It helps to understand yourself

• It increases your ability to influence other by being aware of styles

• Knowledge of styles gives you an awareness of how people can take in the same information and arrive at different decisions by applying a variety of decision-making strategies.

In general, there is no ideal decision-making style applicable to all situations.

How does group decision-making work?

Decision-making in groups can have its advantages and disadvantages. To start with the advantages, groups contain a greater pool of knowledge, provide more perspectives, create more comprehension, increase decision acceptance and create a training ground for inexperienced employees. However, the advantages must be balanced and the manager must determine in which extent to apply to the advantages and disadvantages.

Employee involvement in decision-making and employee empowerment can increase productivity. Further, it increases employee satisfaction, commitment and performance. Nevertheless, the factors influence the effectiveness of employee involvement:

• The design of work

• The level of trust between management and employees

• The employee’s competence and readiness to participate

Five issues need to be considered when using groups to make decisions:

• Groups are less efficient than individuals but more confident about their judgement and choices. But group confidence does not guarantee a better quality of decision (e.g. groupthink).

• A group's confidence overload can cause groupthink.

• Group size negatively affects the decision quality

• The greater the knowledge of the issue of each member in the group, the more accurate the decision-making. Inaccurate judgements can, hence, be downplayed by the group leader

• The composition of a group affects its decision-making processes and performance.

What is participative management?

Participative management increases employee job involvement, organisational commitment, creativity and perceptions. Managers should use the contingency approach when determining whether to include others in the decision-making process. High levels of participation are important for innovative groups. However, given time constraints it is recommendable to let the individual make the decision. Employee involvement is effective in certain situations and obtains positive results by using the contingency approach. When implementing employee involvement programs it is recommendable to: gain the support of employees who have managerial responsibility, to implement a broader totally- quality management programme and to monitor the process of implementing.

How does group problem-solving and creativity work?

To arrive to a consensus decision (the overall agreement of a decision), groups come across barriers. To successfully achieving a consensus, groups should use active listening skills, involve all members and seek out reasons behind arguments and facts. They should not ‘horse trade’ or vote/agree just to avoid upsetting the process.

Experts have developed three group problem-solving techniques: brainstorming, the nominal group technique and the Delphi technique.

What is brainstorming?

Brainstorming, developed by A.F. Osborn, increases creativity as it helps groups generate multiple ideas for solving problems. It reduces interference from the judgement reactions of other group members and it hence effective. Study has proven that collecting the brainstormed ideas anonymously is preferred.

It is advised to follow four rules while brainstorming:

• Generate and write down as many ideas as possible

• Do not set limits

• Do not criticise during the stage of idea generation

• Ignore seniority and think freely

What is the nominal group technique?

The nominal group technique (NGT) helps groups to generate ideas and to evaluate and select solutions. It is a structured group meeting where a particular issue is discussed. Individuals generate ideas in writing just after they understood the problem. These ideas are then recorded on a flip chart and discussed after all ideas are elicited. The ’30-second soap box’ technique (= 30secs to argue for or against an idea) can be applied. Finally, group members vote anonymously for their choices. The normal group technique reduces the obstacles by separating brainstorming from evaluation. Further, it balances participation between group members.

What is the Delphi technique?

The Delphi technique is used by physically dispersed experts to general ideas or judgements. The ideas are anonymously obtained from questionnaires or via the Internet. The Delphi process starts with identifying the issue(s) to be investigated. Then, participants are identified; the questionnaire is developed and e-mailed to participants.

The participants are then asked to

• Review the feedback,

• Prioritise the issues being considered and

• Return the survey within a given time.

This technique is useful when face-to-face discussions are impractical (e.g. conflicts, groupthink). Computer-aided decision- making can reduce obstacles while collecting more information. There are two types of systems: chauffeur-driven and group-driven. Whereas chauffeur-driven systems ask participants to answer on electronic keypads or dials (e.g. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire), group-driven meetings are conducted in special facilities with individual computer workstations that are connected to each other. In general, computer driven processes can reduce obstacles to consensus: input is anonymous, the chance for everyone to contribute, and the production of greater quality and quantity of ideas. This process produces more ideas than groups with 5-10 members.

What are decision biases and challenges?

The most common and pervasive biases in decisionmaking are the availability bias, the confirmation bias, representativeness bias, anchoring, escalation of commitment, framing bias, and overconfidence bias.

The availability bias is the decision-maker’s tendency to base decisions on information that is simply available in memory. This is likely to cause people to overestimate the occurrence of unlikely events. The representativeness bias is the tendency to assess the likelihood of an event based on one’s impression about similar occurrences. The escalation of commitment is the tendency to stick to an ineffective course of action when it is unlikely that the bad situation can be reversed. For instance, to invest more money into an old car or to wait for a long time for a bus when you could have walked there. Anchoring occurs when the decision-maker pays too much emphasis on the first perception and not enough on information that comes later.

The confirmation bias has impact on the decision-making in the phase of collecting information on which we base the decision. When people come to believe that they have in fact predicted what really happened after the event occurred, it is called hindsight.

The framing bias occurs when the decision-maker values a gain more than a loss. The overconfidence bias occurs when people overestimate themselves: the greater the overconfidence the lower the intellectual and interpersonal abilities.

What is organisational culture? - Chapter 10

What is culture?

Edgar Schein defined culture as a pattern of key assumptions which are considered true. Culture comes in layers, from the inside to the outside these layers are: implicit basic assumptions, norms and values, and artefacts and products.

Employees are influenced by two kinds of cultures: societal culture and organisational culture.

Organisational culture are shared values and beliefs, which are hidden in the organisation identity. Three characteristics are:

• Organisational culture is passed on to new employees by the solicitation process.

• Organisational culture has influence on behaviour at the workforce.

• Organisational culture works at two levels: Artefacts (visible) and values and beliefs (less or not visible)

What are organisational values?

The five key components of organisational values are:

• Organisational values are concepts or beliefs

• Refer to wanted results of behaviours

• Overstep situations

• A direct selection or assessment of behaviour and happenings

• Arranged by comparative importance

Two kinds of values are espoused values and enacted values.

• Espoused values are explicit values, which are chosen by a founder or the top management.

• Enacted values are implicit values, which represent actual employee behaviour.

How does the culture model work in a social context?

Culture is influenced by many factors, which can be divided into four pathways: the values and norms of the members of the organisation, the selection of employees, societal norms and professional ethics, and finallyh the rights of the members of the organisation.

How is organisational culture classified?

How are competing values classified?

There are three models of competing values: culture as competing values, different competing values framework, and the culture map.

Culture as competing values uses the dimensions of sociablity (high to low) and solidarity (high to low). When sociability is low, an organisation can be fragmented (solidarity low) or mercenary (solidarity high). When sociability is high, an organisation can be communal (solidarity low) or networked (solidarity high).

The different competing values framework uses the dimensions of flexible versus stable and internal versus external. When an organisation is flexible, an organisation can be a clan (internal) or ad hoc (external). When an organisation is stable, it can be a hierarchy (internal) or market (external).

The culture map uses the the dimensions of flexibility versus control and internal versus external.

What is the Denison organisational culture survey?

The DOCS was made by Denison to identify links between culture and organisational performance. In this model, culture in an organisation has four traits: mission, involvement, (internal) consistency, adaptability.

What is the organisational culture inventory?

The organisational culture inventory was based on thinking styles. It identifies twelve styles of behviour that reflect behavioural norms in terms of direction and intensity. these styles are organised into four groups: satisfaction, people, security, and task.

What is the organisation culture profile?

The organisation culture profile was made to find the fit between persons and culture. 54 statemens of value are sorted by respondents into nine categories. This is matched to a numerical value, and that leads to identifying seven distinct values: innovative, aggressive, outcome-oriented, stable, people-oriented, team-oriented, and detail-oriented.

Do strong corporate cultures improve performance?

A strong culture is not always a good thing because it may override a system’s goals. The central values of a culture are more important than its strength. Culture stems from a founder’s beliefs. To embed a culture involves a process where organisational members teach each other by using the following mechanism:

• Formal statements of the organisation (philosophy, mission, vision)

• Design of physical space, work environments and buildings

• Slogans and language

• Role modelling, training programmes, coaching

• Explicit rewards, status symbols

• Stories, legends and myths

• Organisational activities

• Leader reactions to organisational crises

• Workflow and organisational structure

• Organisational systems and procedures

• Organisational goals and criteria used for employee recruitment

What is organisational socialisation?

Organisational socialisation is the process where new members learn to be part of the culture.

The three phases are:

• Anticipatory socialisation: the learning that takes place before the participant becomes part of the organisation.

• Encounter: the participant observes what the organisation's culture implies.

• Change and acquisition: the participant understands the skills and roles and adapts to values and norms.

During phase 1, the participant has to deal with a realistic job preview (RJP), which means that the participant gets an truthful view of the company. During phase 2, the participant experiences a reality shock, which are the surprised feelings after enduring unforeseen situations or events.

Normative beliefs are people’s expectations and thoughts about how members of an organisation approach their work and interact with others.

What are intercultural differences?

Intercultural differences are the cultural differences between countries and regions.

There are several intercultural aspects which are necessary in the recent globalising world:

• Ethnocentrism: the belief that one’s native country, culture, language and modes of behaviour are superior to all others. It can be managed through education, greater cross-cultural awareness and international experience.

• High-context and low-context cultures: high context consists of social trust, personal relations and goodwill and agreement by general trust. It is verbal. China/Korea. Low context consist of ‘business first’, expertise and performance, agreement by specific, legalistic contracts and efficient negotiations. It is non-verbal. Western countries.

What are the models of cultural dimensions?

What are the cultural dimensions according to Hofstede?

The cultural dimensions that were defined by Hofstede are:

• Power distance: inequality in social constitutions

• Individualism vs. collectivism: the bon between individuals and societal groups, loose / tight

• Masculinity vs. femininity: to what extent do people embrace competitive masculine traits (assertiveness) and / or nurturing feminine traits (solidarity)?

• Uncertainty avoidance: to what extent do people prefer structured vs. unstructured situations?

• Long-term vs. short-term orientation: to what extent do people orientate towards future (saving and being persistent) or to the present/past (traditions)?

The conclusions from Hofstede’s research are:

• Because of varying cultural values, theories and practices need to be adapted to the local culture.

• Only high long-term orientation correlated positively with national economic growth.

• Industrious cultural values are a necessary but insufficient condition for economic growth.

What are the cultural dimensions according to Trompenaars?

Trompenaars developed five dimensions according to a research about the cultural differences between 28 countries.

• Universalism – Particularism: the first focusses on rules, legal contracts, ‘deal is a deal’. The second focusses on relationships, no legal contracts.

• Individualism – Collectivism: the first uses ‘I’, prefer to achieve things alone and assume personal responsibility. The second uses ‘we’, prefer to achieve things within a group.

• Neutral – Emotional: the first does not express what he or she thinks/feels and feels does not feel comfortable with physical contact outside his or her ‘private’ cycle. The second express his or her feelings and thoughts immediately and is easy with physical contact.

• Specific – Diffuse: the first is more open in public space and more closed in private space. He or she separates work and private life. The second is more closed in public space and more open in private space. Work and private life is closely linked.

• Achievement – Ascription: the first is about what you achieved. The second is about your personal addition.

What is the influence of perceptions of time, space and communication?

It is very important to understand the cultural differences in the perception of time, space and communication, to ensure that cooperation between nationalities and cultures can proceed smoothly.

Monochronic time means that you prefer to do one thing at the time because time is limited.

Polychronic time means that you prefer to do several things at the same time because time is flexible.

Interpersonal space has to do with proxemics, which are cultural expectations about interpersonal space. Hall distinguished four interpersonal distance zones:

• Intimate

• Personal

• Social

• Public

Three options are available to be able to communicate between different cultures, despite the different distance zones:

• Stick to your own language

• Rely on translators

• Learn the local language

How can organisational culture be managed?

Managers who are aware of culture and who are willing to examine it may be able to add a lot of value to the organisation by shaping that culture.

An organisational culture is created by the members of an organisation, who bring in ther personal and national norms and values with them. In order to shape a culture, managers need to first observe and accept the culture that is already there. They may need to set aside their own opinions of a perfect world in order to work with the building blocks they have. Cultures are complex as tools, dynamic, and fuzzy. They are not pervasive, inherrently positive, and they are not always sybolic. These are constraints that need to be considered.

It is better for a manager to influence the culture of an organisation internally than to bring in an external consultant.

What is an organisational climate? - Chapter 11

What is organisational climate?

Climate is the shared perception about what is important and appropriate in an organisation. The climate is determined by feelings, reflections and behaviour of people. It can change over time whereas culture is a state determined by history. Culture is resistant to change and is about the examination of underlying values and assumptions. Climate, however, only examines surface level manifestations.

The eight dimensions of pyschological climate are:

• Autonomy
• Cohesion
• Trust
• Pressure
• Support
• Recognition
• Fairness
• Innovation

The following items can assess climate and can take action to change climate:

• Communication

• Values

• Expectations

• Norms

• Policies and Rules

• Programs

• Leadership.

What are stereotypes?

A stereotype is an individual’s belief about characteristics of a group. Stereotypes are not always negative and accurate. They are used to differentiate groups of people from another and may create barriers.

Stereotyping is a four-step process:

• categorising people into groups (gender, age, rage ect.),

• inferring that people within a category possess the same traits,

• forming expectations

• interpreting their behaviour.

Stereotypes are maintained by overestimating stereotypic behaviours, incorrectly explaining expected/unexpected behaviours and differentiating individuals from oneself. However, people that encounter information inconsistent with a stereotype are less apt to judge others.

What are gender stereotypes?

Gender stereotype is the belief that men and women have different traits that make them suitable for different roles. These stereotypes still persist so that the ‘typical’ male has a job and a profession. Underlying trends, such as the dominating number of female students in the legal industry, slowly change the view on gender stereotypes. Glass ceiling is an invisible barrier separating women from advancing into top management positions. It exists because of the masculine culture in the highest corporate echelons. Career advancement is hard for women as there are stereotyped as being focused on the needs of family.

What are age stereotypes?

Age stereotypes concern the discrimination of age. Older people, for instance, are seen as less satisfied and motivated than younger workers. However, evidence proves otherwise: the job satisfaction increases with the age.

What are ethnic and racial stereotypes

Regarding ethic and racial stereotypes, there are three trends that suggest ethic minorities experience their own glass ceiling: they are advancing less in the professional ranks, earn less and experience companies that are unwilling to hire them.

What are the effects of managing diversity?

Evidence shows that managing diversity is competitive advantage as it:

• Lower costs and improves employee attitudes

• Improves recruiting efforts

• Increases sales,market share and corporate profits

• Increases creativity and innovation

• increases group problem-solving and productivity

Equality means to an organisation to achieve equality of opportunity by laws. Important directive agreed by the EU in 2000 referred to the outlawing discrimination in the workplace. Managing diversity enables people to perform to their maximum. It is about changing an organisation’s culture so that people provide the highest productivity.

Barriers to Diversity Management include inaccurate stereotypes, ethonocentristm, diversity not being seen as an organisational priority, and resistance to change. In addition, there are eight action options that can be used to address diversity issues:

1. Include/exclude: the goal to increase or decrease the number of diverse people

2. Deny: this option is used by people denying the existence of differences

3. Assimilate: Diverse people learn to fit the dominant group

4. Suppress: differences are discouraged in this approach

5. Isolate: Diverse people are set off to the side and hence unable to influence organizational change

6. Tolerate: differences are acknowledged but not valued or accepted

7. Build relationships: it addresses diversity by fostering relationship with acceptance and understanding

8. Foster mutual adaption: people recognise and accept differences. The way on how to manage diversity is based on the context of the organisation. Ann Morrison made a study on how to successfully manage diversity. As a result, she classified three main types: accountability, development and recruitment. In Table 9.5 the top 10 practices associated with each type are presented.

Three diversity practices are shown:

• Accountability practices refer to manager’s responsibility to treat diverse employees the same.

• Development practices emphases on preparing diverse employees for greater responsibility.

• Recruitment practices focus on attracting job applicants that are willing to accept challenges.

What effect does incivility have on climate outcomes?

Robert Sutton researched bad behaviour in companies and found that lack of civility can ahve seriously negative consequences for organisational outcomes.

The consequences of being treated without civility include:

• Decreased work effort
• Decreased time spent at work
• Decreased quality of work performed
• Work time lost to worry
• Work time lost to avoiding the uncivil person
• Decline in performance
• Decline in commitment

What are the outcomes of a bad climate?

Work stress results from many factors such as fundamental changes (increased competition, work pressure), technological advancements (mobile phones, email, the Internet), the dynamics of modern life and motivation to reach extrinsic goals (money, status).

The term ‘stress’ is a response of individual characteristics that result from any external action and places physical/psychological demands upon a person. Stressors are environmental demands that product such a response.

What are the sources of stress?

Stress causes one basic reaction: fight-or-flight response. It means to either run away or accept stressors. This stress response involves hormonal changes mobilising the body for extreme demands. It can lead to headaches, insomnia and high blood pressure or outward symptoms such a exhaustion, aching limbs and depression. Hans Selye stated that both positive and negative events cause an identical stress response. Further, a positive outcome as a result of stress is referred to as ‘eustress’. Moreover, Selye said that stress can have positive consequences and should not be avoided. The absence of stress is, according to Selye, death. Hence, moderate amount of stress is beneficial.

Robert Karasek developed the job demand-control model that focuses on the stress factors inherent in the work organisation. It consists of three dimensions: psychological demand of a job, amount of autonomy and social support. He figured out that only the combination of high psychological demand and low autonomy triggered work stress. A lack of social support can even reinforce this negative effect. But people do not experience the same level of stress for a given type of stressor. Women perceive interpersonal conflicts more stressful than men and the belief of having control over the stressors leads to lower levels of stress. Stressful life events (e.g. death of a family member) can create stress because it includes significant changes.

What are stressors?

Stressors are essentials for stress. The model of occupational stress shows the four most important types of stressors: individual, group, organisational and those outside the organisation.

Individual stressors are directly linked with an individual's work responsibilities. Group stressors arise because of group dynamics and managerial behaviour. Organisational stressors have influence on a large amount of employees. Extra-organisational stressors arise because of factors outside the organisation. Perceived stress is a person's general impression about how different stressors affect his or her life. Stress can have phsychological/attitudinal, behavioural, cognitive and physical health consequences.

What is burnout?

Burnout is a stress-induced problem that occurs over time and does not involve a specific feeling. It has an impact on employee well-being.

Burnout develops in three phases: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and feeling a lack of personal accomplishment (Personal stressors (e.g. high expectations) and job stressors (e.g. role overload, role conflict) can lead to the first phase of stress: emotional exhaustion. Over time, it can turn into depersonalisation so that the individual feels ineffective and being unappreciated. The effects of all three phases are several negative attitudinal and behavioural symptoms of burnout.

The characteristics of burnout are:

• Fatalism,
• Boredom
• DIscontent
• Cynicism
• Inadequacy
• Failure
• Overwork
• Nastiness
• Dissatisfaction
• Escape

Studies revealed that women rated life events as more stressful than men. Further, burnout was positively related to job stressors and turnover intentions but negatively related to supportive resources. In addition, the order of phases of burnout is not completely proved to be true. Finally, the employees’ work demand was more strongly correlated to stress than employees’ perception of resources at work.

To reduce burnout, organisations buffer its effects. This includes increased autonomy, support from the management and recognition for accomplishment. Organisations can also change the content of the job to reduce burnout. Moderators are variables that can either weaken or strengthen the effects of stressors. The awareness of moderators can reduce the negative outcomes of stress.

How can stress be coped with?

Social relationships can help people to better handle stress. Social support is measured in regard to the quantity and quality of an individual’s social relationship.

The mechanism of social support starts with the potentially stressful event. If it is perceived that there is support availabale, and it is used, the purpose of the support can be eigher global or specific. The support is engaged, and the effect of the social support on reducing stress influences the perceived availability of support recources. Support network evolve from cultural norms, social institutions, companies, groups or individuals that provide four types of support:

• Esteem support

• Informational support

• Social companionship

• Instrumental support

While global social support is broad in scope, functional social support is narrower. People with low social support tend to have poorer immune systems functioning and die earlier. Negative social support can negatively affects one’s mental health.

What is coping?

Coping is the process of managing external or internal demands that exceed the resources of the person. It reduces the impact of stress and enhances the personal life and professional skills.

Situational factors are characteristics from the environment that affect how people interpret stressors (e.g. the ambiguity of a situation). Personal factors are personality traits that have an impact on the appraisal of stressors. Other traits such as self-esteem, optimism and self-efficacy also affect the appraisal of stressors. An individual’s overall perception of a stressor is reflected in the cognitive appraisal that can result in a categorisation of harmful, threatening or challenging stressor. Then, specific behaviours and cognitions are used to cope with the situation (coping strategies). There are three coping strategies:

• Control strategy

• Escape strategy

• Symptom management strategy

More and more organisations implement a variety of stress-reduction programmes to help employees cope with stress. There are different individual stress-reduction techniques such as the muscle relaxation. Further techniques to reduce stress are the following:

• Muscle relaxation
• Biofeedback
• Meditation
• Cognitive restructuring
• Holistic wellness approach

How do power, politics and conflict work in organisations? - Chapter 12

What is organisational influence?

Organisations struggle between individual and collective interests. Socialisation in family settings, for instance, developed in the notion of mutuality of interest. The term ‘mutuality of interest’ includes the win-win thinking and thus to serve one’s self-interest.

How can tactics and outcomes be influenced?

David Kipnis (1980) revealed in his study how people influence each other in organisations. There are nine generic influence tactics ranked in order of use in the workplace:

• Rational persuasion: convincing someone by logic or facts (soft)

• Inspirational appeals: building enthusiasm by appealing to other’s emotions (soft)

• Consultation: convincing others to participate in planning (soft)

• Ingratiation: being friendly and helpful to get someone in a good mood (soft)

• Personal appeals: Making a request by referring to friendship (soft)

• Exchange: Making implied promises (hard)

• Coalition tactics: convincing others to support you effort to persuade someone (hard)

• Pressure: Demanding compliance (hard)

• Legitimating tactics: establishing a request on one’s authority (hard)

These tactics influence people on all directions (downward, upward or lateral). ‘Soft’ influence tactics are perceived as fair whereas ‘hard’ influence tactics are considered as unfair. If someone uses the exchange tactics to convince someone towards a direction, three possible influence outcomes may show up: Commitment, Compliance or Resistance. Commitment is more likely when people rely on consultation and when the influence involves something important.

Robert C. Cialdini offered research-based advice of six principles of influence and persuasion. These six principles are:

• Liking
• Reciprocity
• Social proof
• Consistency
• Authority
• Scarcity

It is recommended to use these principles in combination for maximum impact.

What are the bases of power?

Power is essential for a host of reasons. It is a positive force in organisations. Social power is the ability to arrange resources (human, informational, material) to get something done. Power can be classified into two dimensions: the two types of power (socialised and personalised) and the five bases of power. Socialised powerinvolves self-doubts, mixed outcomes and concerns for others, while personalised power expresses the set priority of personal aggrandisement.

Women have a higher need of socialised power than men. John French and Bertram Raven proposed that power arises from the following five bases:

• Reward power: the extent to what a manager obtains compliance by promising rewards

• Coercive power: the extent to what someone punishes another person

• Legitimate power: the base of power is rooted to one’s authority

• Expert power: the power of valued knowledge

• Referent power: the power to consent to do something by charisma

Study revealed that expert, referent, reward and legitimate power had a positive impact on work outcomes (e.g. job performance, job satisfaction), whereas coercive power had a rather negative one. Further, expert and referent power resulted in favourable reactions from lower-level employees and have the best potential for increasing job satisfaction. Positive legitimate, expert and referent power foster commitment that is superior to compliance as it is powered by internal motivation.

How do empowerment and delegation work?

Empowerment means to release the power that people have in their knowledge, experience and internal motivation into the organisation. A unified information base in an organisation is a competitive advantage but comprises risks of betrayal as information sharing occurs to a large extent.

Power is not a zero-sum situation (person’s gain is another’s loss) and hence not threat. Empowerment should be considered as a matter of degree. From a low degree of empowerment to a high degree of empowerment, there are: domination, consultation, participation, and delegation. The goal is to increase productivity and competitiveness.

Randolph’s Empowerment Model consists of a three-pronged empowerment plan. Information sharing, trust, clear goals and training are necessary to build up the empowerment plan.

The highest degree of empowerment is delegating which empowers lower-level employees to make their own decisions. Barriers to delegation are the following:

• belief in ‘do it better yourself’

• lack of trust

• low self-confidence

• fear of considered to be lazy

• fair of competition from below

• vague job definition.

Other barriers are the lack of control and the reluctance to take risks when delegate tasks to employees. However, delegation is associated with competent employees that share manager’s task objectives. Further, it was associated with a manager’s positive relationship with employees and the view of lower-level person as supervisor.

But delegation requires trust. Evolving trust from consultation over participation leads to stage of delegation. One of the best manners to gain a supervisor's trust is by showing initiative. In order of decreasing time to acto to solve a problem, the actions one can take are:

• Apathy
• Non-compliance
• Telling someone about a problem
• Asking someone else to act
• Asking for approval to act
• Taking action.

Personal initiative results form individuals taking an active approach to work and going beyond have a behaviour syndrome called personal initiative. It is characterised by consistency, long-term focus, goal-directness, persistence in facing barriers and being proactive.

What is political action?

There are three levels of political action: the individual level, the coalition level and the network level. At the first level, the individual pursues his/her personal self-interests. People with a common interest, form a coalition that it described as an informal group bound due to pursuit of a common issue. As the target of the coalition is resolved, the informal group bound disbands. The last level of political action is the network level. In contrast to coalition, networks are people-oriented and not issue-oriented. They seek for social support for their general self-interests and have a broader agenda.

Researchers have identified eight common political tactics in organisations. These tactics are:

• Attacking or blaming others
• Using information as a political tool
• Impression management
• Developming a base of support
• Praising others (ingratiation)
• Forming power coalitions with strong allies
• Associating with influential people
• Creating obligations (reciprocity)

Organisational politics is a positive force in modern organisations and ever-present in work life. It is defined as intentional acts of influence to protect the self-interest of individuals. However, when self-interests erode, politic behaviour becomes a negative force. Uncertainty triggers political intervention. Sources of uncertainty are unclear objectives, vague performance measures, ill-defined decision processes, strong individual completion and any type of change.

What is impression management?

Impression management is a process by which people manipulate the reactions of others to their ideas. It is used to differentiate the organisation’s image for competitor companies and involves high self-monitoring employees (‘chameleons’ that adjust to their surroundings), systematic manipulation of attributions and organisational politics (focus on self-interest).

Four motives for making a poor impression are:

• Avoidance: avoid additional work, stress, burnout or unwanted promotion.

• Obtain concrete rewards: the employee wants pay raise or promotion.

• Exit: employee wants to get fired or suspended.

• Power: employee wants control, manipulate or intimidate others.

In the context of these motives, researchers identified five unfavourable upward impression management tactics:

• Decreasing performance

• Not working to potential

• Withdrawing

• Displaying a bad attitude

• Broadcasting limitations

To manage employees making a bad impression, it is recommended to give employees, for instance, a more challenging work, greater autonomy and better feedback.

In conclusion, organisation politics are necessary and cannot be eliminated. Personal values, ethics and temperament create the individual’s degree of ‘politicalness’. Negative expressions of organisation politics can be avoided in organisation by, for example, screening out overly-political workers in the hiring process and creating an open-book system.

How does organisational conflict work?

A conflict is a process in which on party experiences its interests as being negatively affected by another party. Conflict can strengthen or weaken over time.

Frederick Taylor believed that conflicts threatened management’s authority and hence should be avoided. Later, researchers recognised the inevitability of conflicts. In the 1970s, OB specialists realised that conflicts had positive and negative outcomes that depend on its intensity and nature (see Figure 14.1). Too little conflicts leads thus to a lack of creativity. But excessive conflicts, on the other hand, can decrease the organisational performance due to workplace aggression and violence.

Conflicts are related to people’s personalities. As people have different traits and characteristics, conflicts are likely to occur.

Among situations that tend to produce either functional or dysfunctional conflicts belong, for instance, incompatible personalities, unclear job boundaries and competition for limited resources. Stimulating functional conflict sometimes is essential to gain value in the decision-making groups. Dean Tjosvold's cooperative model indicates three desired outcomes: agreement, Stronger relationships and learning.

What are personality conflicts?

Personality conflicts often refer to people’s personalities. These personalities are stable and different. They can influence a number of other factors. Conflicts at the individual level can grow and endanger an organisation. The manager should thus protect the organisation by documenting the nature of the conflict.

Conflicts among work groups (intergroup conflicts) are a threat to organisational competitiveness. Too much cohesiveness can lead to groupthink. Changes associated with increased group cohesiveness revealed that members of in-groups consider themselves as a collection of unique individuals but other groups as being similar. Further, outsiders are seen as threat but in-group members view themselves as morally correct. Finally, the perception of reality distorts as in-group members overact differences between their group and the other group.

Programmed conflict can be helpful as it means to raise different opinions apart from personal feelings. This way, contributors have to defend or criticise ideas based on personal preferences. Two programmed conflict techniques are:

• Devil’s advocacy: This technique is about one individual playing the role of devil’s advocate and thus generate critical thinking.

• Dialectic method: This technique is time-honoured as it is referable to dialectic school of philosophy in Greece. It is about exploring opposite positions in a structured debate. However, this method requires more skill training than the devil’s advocacy and overshadows the issue.

How can conflict be handled?

Afzalur Rahim identified five different conflict-handling styles that are classified in high to low concern for self and low to high concern for others. These two variables produce five styles: integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and compromising. Each style has its strength and limitations so that there is no best style.

• Integrating/problem-solving style: the problem of the issue is cooperatively identified in order to generate solutions and select one of them.

• Strength: long-lasting impact; Weakness: time-consuming

• Obliging/ smoothing style: it emphases on the commonalities and is appropriate in complex problems. Strength: encourages co-operating; Weakness: temporary fix

• Dominating / forcing style: it has high concern for self and low concern for others and is appropriate in implementing an unpopular solution. Strength: speed; weakness: resentment

• Avoiding tactic: it suppresses the issue and is appropriate for trivial issues. Strength: buys time in ambiguous situations; Weakness: temporary fix

• Compromising: it involves moderate concern for self and others and is appropriate when parties possess equal power. Strength: democratic process; Weakness: keeps from creative problem solving

These types of styles are used when conflicts become dysfunctional.

How does negotiation work?

Negotiation is a decision-making process that involves dependent parties with different preferences. There are two types of negotiation: distributive and integrative. The first type concerns that sharing of a fixed amount, whereas the integrative type of negotiation goes beyond. It calls for a win-win strategy where all can benefit. The added-value negotiation is an integrative approach. However, the success of integrative negotiation depends on the quality of information exchanged. Unethical tactics in negotiations can erode trust and goodwill.

When conflicting parties are unable to integrative negotiation, third-party interventions are essential to abandon fixed-pie thinking (or win-lose thinking). The alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is a more constructive and less expensive approach.

The steps of ADR are:

• Step 1: Clarify interests
• Step 2: Identify options
• Step 3: Design alternative deal packages
• Step 4: Select a deal
• Step 5: perfect the deal.

How does leadership work in organisations? - Chapter 13

Leaders drag people in directions they would not normally go and are successful when they can make a difference. They are culturally differing: While Americans are obsessively bound by the notion Netherlands and French only have vague concepts. Supervision differs from very low in Switzerland to very high in the USA. But also concepts of leadership are different among the European countries: The Nordic countries of Europe, for instance, score high on ‘interpersonal directness and proximity’. In other countries (Georgia, Poland, Turkey and Slovenia) leaders are successful as they are self-interested, indirect and well organised. However, autonomy is very important to the Germanic cluster (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). Visionary and status conscious leaders are more seen as successful in the Latin cluster.

What is leadership?

Organisational leadership can be defined as the influence in which leaders seeks subordinate’s participation in an effort to reach goals. A leader is able to influence, motivate and make others contribute towards organisational success. Individual leadership includes mentoring, coaching, inspiring and motivating. Leaders are able to build culture and teams.

The ‘Conceptual Framework for Understanding Leadership’ integrates components of different theories that, in turn, affect an individual’s ability to employ managerial behaviour. It states that leader characteristics and external and internal contingencies influence leader behaviour. Leader behaviour influences organisational outcomes, which in turn influences leader outcomes.

What is the difference between leading versus managing?

However, there is a difference between leading and managing as the two activities entail a unique set of functions. Managing means to plan, investigate, organise and control whereas leading deals with the interpersonal aspects of a manager’s job. Management is about handling complexity; leadership is handling the change.

What are the trait theories of leadership?

There are two approaches that explain leadership: trait theories and behavioural theories. While the first theory identifies the personal traits that differs leaders from followers, the second one examines leadership from another perspective.

What were the findings of Stogdill and Mann?

The leader trait is a born predisposition to be a leader. Ralph Stogdill and Richard Mann summarised leaders into five traits: intelligence, dominance, self-confidence, level of energy and activity, and task-relevant knowledge.

But research revealed that the five traits can not predict the future leaders in organisations. Among all the seven categories, Mann highlighted intelligence as the best predictor. Still the positive relationship between traits and leadership was weak (correlation: 0.15).

Modern studies by Robert Lord assume that people have leadership prototypes that affect perceptions of who is effective as leader and who is not. Leadership prototype is the mental concept of behaviours that you believe are possessed by leaders. Hence, people perceive others as a leader as he/she possesses the traits they look for. Traits associated with intelligence, masculinity and dominance are most perceived as leader’s characteristics. Studies revealed that males and those who are more behaviourally flexible are more seen to be leaders. Leadership prototypes, however, are culturally bound and influences by national cultural values. According to another research, the leader’s credibility is constituted by honesty, forward-lookingness, inspiration and competence.

What influence does gender have as a leadership trait?

Men and women differ in the type of leadership roles: Whereas men display more overall leadership, women display more social leadership. Moreover, women make the use of a more democratic and participative style while men employ a more autocratic and directive style.

The outcome of a meta-analysis revealed three key findings:

• Female and male leaders were classified as equally effective

• Men are more effective leaders than women when their roles were more masculine defined and women are more effective leaders in less masculine defined roles

• Male leaders were seen more effective than female when there was a greater percentage of male leaders and subordinates

What are behavioural styles theories?

The Ohio State studies states that two independent dimensions describe the behaviour of a leader: consideration and initiating structure. The first dimension focuses on group member’s needs and desires. The second dimension, the initiating structure, is leader behaviour that organises and defines what to do next to maximise the output. The four leadership styles that derive from the two dimensions that are again scored either low or high on the dimension. As a result, the four leadership styles are: low structure, high consideration; low structure, low consideration; high structure, high consideration or high structure, low consideration.

The University of Michigan also studied leadership and identified two styles of leadership: leaders that either focus on the employee or on the job. In conclusion, effective leaders have a good relationship with their subordinates, use the group as a method of supervision, and set high goals.

What is Blake and Mouton's managerial/leadership grid?

The most popular leadership model is the Robert Blake and Jane Mouton Leadership Grid. It is formed by the intersection of two dimensions of leader behaviour: ‘concern for production’ and ‘concern for people’. These dimensions involve attitudes and patterns of thinking and even specific types of behaviour. The five leadership styles that derive from the leadership grid are ‘country club management’, ‘impoverished management’, ‘middle-of-the-road management’, ‘team management’ and ‘authority compliance’. However, Blake and Mouton’s research is criticised as being self-serving.

The behavioural style approach declares that leaders are shaped by improving and developing their behaviour. Further, there is no best style of leadership as the effectiveness of leadership styles depend on the circumstances. Research also states that there is a difference between how frequently and how effectively managers exhibit various types of leadership behaviour.

What are situational and contingency theories?

Situational theories state that a different style of leader behaviour is only effective depending on the situation. As the situation changes, the style does too. There are three alternative situational theories of leadership: Fiedler’s contingency model, the path-goal theory and Hersey and Blanchard’s situational leadership theory.

What is Fiedler's contingency model?

The first model, developed by Fred Fiedler, is the oldest and most known model of leadership. It assumes that the performance of a leader depends on the degree to which the leader has control/influence and the leader’s basic motivation. Fiedler, thereby, believes that leaders are either task-motivated or relationship-motivated. Moreover, leaders have one dominant leadership style that is not modifiable.

Situational control is the amount of control and influence the leader has in his/her work environment. It ranges from high to low. The three dimensions of situational control are leader-member relations, task structure and position power.

• Leader-member relations: the leader can depend on the group and ensure that the group tries to meet the leader’s objectives. It is the most important component of situational control.

• Task Structure: the amount of structure within work tasks. It is the second most important component.

• Position power: the leader’s formal power to reward or punish employees

These three dimensions form eight combinations of situational control. Fiedler’s model is not agreed upon and is not confirmed for every possible variant. His main contribution is the recognition that leadership success is contingent on the situation and style.

What is path-goal theory?

The path-goal theory focalises on the influence leaders have on followers’ expectations. It is based on the expectancy theory of motivation and states that employees only accept the leader’s behaviour when it is seen as a source of satisfaction. This theory avoids obstacles to goal accomplishments, supports and rewards employees and is, hence, motivational. It is an intuitive approach as leaders are always trying to change people’s behaviour to product better results.

In contrast to Fiedler, Roubert House argues that leaders do not use only one style of leadership. He states there are four styles that leaders use intermittently:

• Directive leadership: Guiding and managing workers through knowledge

• Supportive leadership: Looking after the employees’ needs and treating everyone as equal

• Participative leadership: Considering others ideas and consulting with employees

• Achievement-oriented leadership: To set high performance levels by challenging goals and thereby demonstrating confidence in the abilities of employees.

Research supports the idea of several leadership styles.

What are contingency factors?

Contingency factors are situational factors that make one style of leadership a better choice than another. This model is divided into two variables: the employee characteristics and the environmental factors. The employee characteristics include locus of control, task ability, need for achievement, experience and need for clarity. The environmental factors are employee’s task, authority system and work group. These factors can either hinder or motivate employees.

What is Hersey and Blanchard's situational leadership theory?

The Situational leadership theory (SLT) developed by Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard states that effective leadership behaviour is dependant on the level of readiness the leaders’ followers have. Readiness is the amount of willingness someone possesses to complete a task. Willingness, thereby, is a mix of confidence, commitment and motivation.

It represents four leadership styles and declares which style to use depending on the level of readiness.

However, scientific research revealed that leadership effectiveness is not imputable to follower readiness and leadership style.

What are transactional and transformational/charismatic leadership?

Two new theories of leadership have emerged over the last decades: The transactional leadership and the charismatic leadership.

The transactional leadership tries to engage employees’ behaviour. This means leaders motivate employees by giving rewards and exert corrective action when performance goals are not obtained.

The charismatic leadership enables followers to develop deep commitment. Leaders using this approach can transform followers by appealing to followers’ values and personal identity (self-concept). According to the charismatic model of leadership, organisational culture and leader behaviour influence eachother. Leader behaviour then has an effect on followers and work groups. This then has an influence on outcomes. The use of charismatic leadership is necessary in organisations with adaptive cultures. The charismatic leaders first three sets of leader behaviour that positively affects followers and, in turn, positively influences outcomes.

What are some additional perspectives on leadership?

In addition, there are four more approaches to leadership: substitutes for leadership, servant leadership, and coaching.

What is Kerr and Jermier's substitue for a leadership model?

Steven Kerr and John Jermier developed the first approach, which identifies the substitutes for leadership to improve leadership effectiveness. Different characteristics (of the subordinate, task and organisation) can determine different types of leader behaviour. Two leader behaviours are at choice depending on the individual characteristics: the relationship-oriented and the task-oriented leader behaviour.

What is servant-leadership?

Another approach to leadership is the servant-leadership by Robert Greenleaf. It assumes that leaders act as servants and serve the needs of others as priority.

The characteristics of the Servant-Leader are the following:

• Listening
• Empathy
• Healing
• Awareness
• Persuasion
• Conceptualisation
• Foresight
• Stewardship
• Commitment to the growth of people
• Building community

What is the coaching approach?

The last approach, coaching, includes different characteristics. Coaches must be committed to the goals and the team, they must spend much time educating and instructing the group (skill building) and support the team. Further, coaches are team builder by bridging gaps between unique members, and results-oriented in their discipline.

What makes leaders either horrible or great?

In the book In Search of Excellence eight core practices of successful leadership were named. These eight practices are:

• A bias for action
• Staying close to the consumer
• Autonomy and entrepreneurship (decentralisation)
• Productivity through people
• Hands-on, value-driven
• Remaining with the core business
• Simple form, lean staff
• Simultaneous loose-tight properties

What leader behaviours are key?

Assertiveness balance is a key challenge. Asymmetric attention is unavoidable, but needs to be managed. Power (in)sensitivity means that people in power are more focused on their own needs than on those of others. Because of this, leaders need to be self-aware. Taking control means that a leader needs to monitor outcomes and change their behaviour if they made a wrong choice. Dirty work needs to be done quickly, with honesty and with dignity.

What are leader-follower interaction processes?

Perserverence for long-term goals is a very important factor for success. Leaders should instil it in their followers. Small wins can be overlooked, but are key to the motivation of followers. Stars should be avoided, because they can damage the cooperation in a team. Simplicity should be increased by the leader so that the followers can focus on their jobs. Protection of followers is an extention of simplicity: leaders should shield their followers from external disturbances so that they can focus on their jobs.

What is organisational architecture? - Chapter 14

How can an organisation be defined, described and depicted?

Organisations are defined as a system of coordinated activities. An organisation exists to get things done for a group of people. All organisations have four things in common: division of labour, hierarchy in authority, coordination of effort and the people in an organisation have a common goal. These factors are called the determinants of organisational structure. In order to describe organisational structure, we need more than precision. Organisations can be given labels. These labels depend on the type of organisation one is dealing with. Some of the most common types are simple, functional, divisional, matrix and ad hoc types.

Ascribing an organisation to a type depends on how the work is organised. Also, there are three additional dimensions that give information about the core of an organisation. The level of centralisation tells something about how decisions are made and where people coordinate. The level of formalisation tells about coordination: what can be said about the standardised coordinated procedures? Organisational differentiation tells something about how the work is divided and it also tells something about the specific organisation of daily work activities.

Organisations have goals and structures to reach these goals. The goals people in an organisation have in common are the things that connect these people and they are the reason to exist (raison d’être). Goals can change or be reached. Some organisation have a real goal (like building a supermarket) and when this goal is reached, the organisation will seize to exist. Other organisation stay together for a long time, because they have infinitive goals (transporting people).

In an organisational chart one can see how work is divided and which person is in charge. Every person or function is depicted as a rectangle and the different levels (hierarchy) are depicted. However, an organisational chart is oversimplified. A real structure of an organisation is more complex and with that chart one can’t understand the implications of the organisation structure.

What are the elements of an organisation structure?

An organisational structure says something about the division of labour, the hierarchy of authority and the common goals. Such a structure also tells more about the boundaries within that structure, the informal and political structures and how the authority is founded.

How are the responsibilities and the labour divided?

An organisation can do so much more than a single individual. That’s because an organisation can take on bigger projects with more people and more people will finish something quicker than a few people. The work needs to be divided. People can specialize in one or a couple of well-defined tasks. If you do something a lot of times, you will become good at it. However, each task needs to fit in to the whole picture.

Specialisation can be horizontal or vertical. Horizontal specialisation is about how many different activities are covered by a job. Pressing a button is a job with little horizontal specialisation, but cleaning a building, by washing the floors, emptying the bins, cleaning the toilets, is more horizontal. Vertical specialisation is about how much a person is involved in the execution and the administration of activities.

Some economists have calculated that productivity increases between 240 and 4800 because of specialisation. However, specialisation does have its disadvantages. Work can become boring. If you keep pressing one button, you will probably get bored. This may demotivate you to do your job. Organisations need to balance the advantages of specialisation and differentiation. Differentiation occurs by dividing the work and technical specialisation. One outcome of differentiation is that specialists in one field think differently than specialists in another field. However, if everyone is differentiating and there is too much differentiation, there won’t always be proper communication. There therefore also needs to be integration in an organisation.

According to research, successful organisation have a high degree of differentiation and integration. Unsuccessful organisations don’t have a high degree of these two. In those organisations, there is no good balance between too much differentiation and not enough integration. Managers need to find and keep a balance between the increasing differentiation and a proper integration and coordination.

What is the co-ordination of effort?

The division of work asks for the coordination to execute activities of an organisation. Coordination can be seen as a mechanism that processes information. Before coordination can take place, one needs to have information about the goals and tasks of an organisation.

Coordination can be vertical or horizontal. Vertical is about direct supervision, formal rules and plans. Horizontal coordination is about different comities and liaison roles. Some coordinated tasks have become a routine and these can be carried out by a standard set of procedures. Other (unusual) situations need meetings, comities and cooperation. Every form of coordination has its advantages and disadvantages.

Different forms of standardisation are ways to coordinate tasks. The standardisation of work means that different task are specified in a good manner and tasks become routine. Standardisation of output means that the results of a task are specified. This is about what needs to be accomplished, not how it needs to be accomplished. Standardisation of skills means that people with the same skills are being hired, like lawyers at a law firm. Standardisation of norms means that people are trained, influenced and hired because they have the same norms. These norms determine how people execute the tasks.

Formalisation shows the level of rights and duties of employees. The bigger the organisation, the more formalisation is needed to maintain control. When there are many informal groups in an organisation and not much hierarchy, there is less formalisation.

What effect do decision rights have?

In organisations, decisions need to be made in one way or the other. A hierarchy of authority is present in organisations. This hierarchy determines the communication network. Unity of command means that every employee needs to only report to one manager. When people need to report to more managers, organisations can become inefficient because conflicting orders can be present. The army has a unity of command. Managers need to make decisions. However, the manager of the accountancy department shouldn’t make decisions about marketing. Decisions needs to be made by people who are best informed about a subject.

What are organisational boundaries and other structural elements?

Coordination and taking decisions is also a matter of boundary. Supermarkets don’t make a lot of their own products. They often do produce some of their bread, but most products are delivered by other companies. Setting boundaries is about vertical integration (how many levels of production do we want?) and horizontal integration(how many different cases do we want to use?). This is also called the make-or-buy decision.

Every organisation has a formal and informal structure. People who work often together, will at a certain point develop relationships with each other that surpass the formal boundaries. Structures change throughout time and because of external influences. A big example of this is IT. Because of IT, many things in an organisation have changed.

What are the different organisational forms?

Organisation charts show the organisational form. Without text, you can’t understand the organisation form. You would only be able to see rectangles and you won’t understand what rectangle is which employee.

What is the simple form of organising?

In small organisation, one manager is enough. When more people enter an organisation, the amount of people a manager needs to maintain a relationship with, increases. When there is one manager and there are two employees, there are three relationships that need to be maintained (the manager with employee A, the manager with employee B and the relationship between employee A and employee B). If an extra employee comes into the picture, six relationships need to be maintained. The number of relationships grows faster than the amount of employees. The amount of employees a manager controls, is called the span of control.

What are functional organisations?

When an organisation gets large enough, it goes from a simple form to a functional form. This form has more managers and every department is led by a manager. Grouping people with the same background and tasks together facilitates the internal collaboration, control and efficiency. Sometimes, managers have too many problems and information to deal with and may lead to information overload. With a formal organisation, more coordination and cooperation is needed between the divisions than with a simple organisation.

What are divisional form variations?

Some organisations have decided to deal with things that don’t have much in common. In divisional organisations, all components of an organisation fall within the boundaries of the division. The units need to report to the division manager. Divisions can be organised in different ways (location, income). Every division can function as a profit centre and as an independent business. It can easily be put into an organisation or removed from an organisation. The headquarters of the corporation determines the goals of the division and decides how much autonomy a division will get. A division has different advantages. One of the advantages is that the division is closer to the market and therefore is able to act better on insecurities than a big headquarters. A disadvantage is that divisions can compete against each other.

What is the matrix form of organising?

Some organisations have a matrix form. A matrix form is used when functional specialisation and cross-functional integration is needed. In a matrix form, every member of an organisation is part of a functional division and of a project. An advantage of a matrix is that functional expertise and product expertise are combined. Another advantage is that the additional values and use of individual experts are maximised. A disadvantage is that confusion can arise about the responsibilities and that conflicts can arise because of dual lines of authority.

Simple organisations are small, centralised, they have little differentiation, specialisation or formalisation and they rely on direct supervision. When organisations increase, functional organisations come into existence. The divisional form of an organisation is for large organisations (matrix form).

What organisational types exist?

Organisational forms and organisational types are different. Types are about the consistency of structural elements: division of labour, coordination and hierarchy of authority. A big change has occurred in organisational types the last couple of decades and these changes are based on the changes in companies.

The first big companies at the beginning of the 20th century were focused on control, efficiency, developing mechanisms and bureaucracy. Later on, people realised mechanical organisations had shortcomings and more organisational types came into existence, like organic organisations (flexible organisations). Organisations can also be categorised as do-organisations and think-organisations. Organisations were focused on executing tasks efficiently, but nowadays organisations are more complex and more emphasis is on thinking and analysing of the environment.

What are bureaucratic organisations?

Max Weber used to think that the bureaucracy was the best form of an organisation. According to him, there were different types of organisations, all based on power and authority. The most ideal one, according to Weber, bases power and authority on objective criteria: the bureaucratic organisation.

In bureaucratic organisations the rules and procedures are based on rationality and not on personality or habits. In bureaucratic organisations the roles are well defined and focused on the maximisation of efficiency. An organisation is a combination of roles and tasks and power arise from certain roles. Making decisions is completely rational and there are many rules, procedures and much control. This results in flexibility, complexity and inefficiency. People find it hard to function in these structures and Weber’s model has (because of this) a bad reputation.

According to Weber, there are four factors that make bureaucratic models efficient:

• A hierarchy of authority

• Division of labour: people become proficient in standardised tasks when they keep on doing these tasks

• Administrative impersonality: decisions about hiring and promotion should be based on competence, not on favouritism.

• Rules: strict rules will result in predictable behaviour

Bureaucracies come in handy when people want standardised and uniform behaviour, but extreme forms of bureaucracy will result in dysfunction and inefficiency. Nowadays, bureaucracy is associated with being put on hold, being send from one building to another and waiting in line.

What are mechanistic and organic organisations?

Mechanistic organisations are rigid bureaucracies with strict rules, top-down communication and narrow defined tasks. An example of this is working at the McDonalds. Every job is divided into little steps and the whole process is automated. Organic organisations are flexible and exists of individuals with multiple talents and who perform more than one task. In mechanistic organisations, central decisions are taken, while this isn’t the case with organic organisations. The latter form is able to adapt better to the changing situation.

What are Mintzberg's organisation types?

Mintzberg’s work has seven organisational types. According to Mintzberg there are five components in every organisation that reflects five types of tasks:

• Strategic apex: managers and directors

• Middle line: middle line managers have the responsibility over sub-elements of the organisation activities and the authority over the employees

• Operating core: employees responsible for the core tasks of an organisation

• Techno structure: staff members who take care of the administrative processes of the job of the core members (human resources, planning, accountants)

• Supportive staff members: staff members who take care of the operational tasks, like communication, IT and marketing

The first of the seven types is the entrepreneurial organisation. This is a small organisation and it’s quit informal. The manager can control, manage and coordinate everything. This type can be found in start-ups, local firms and local supermarkets. These organisations came into existence to promote a new idea or product.

A second type is the mechanical organisation. This can be found in bigger organisations that are active in mass production. Control and efficiency are important. The third type is the diversified organisation. These organisaions arise when a company expands its business. These companies have multiple products that are usually not related to each other. The size and diversity result in the company not being integrated very well and because of this, semi-autonomous companies must arise.

The fourth type is the professional organisation. An example of this is a university. The professionals work in a functional structure, but independent of each other and with large decision-making capacities. This won’t result in informal flexible structures, but in bureaucratic organisations with strict rules and procedures. The flexibility is low, but the tasks are stable and routine, which results in standardisation. There is not much cooperation and integration between the different groups of professionals.

An innovative organisation is organic and it’s the opposite of a bureaucratic form. The teamwork, decentralisation, little authority and rules and bottom-up decision making, will result in flexibility and a high degree of innovation and adaptability. However, efficiency is low and there is little control in the organisation. A missionary organisation is about a mission employees have in common. The values, norms and mission are what keeps the organisation together and a charismatic leader is present who looks over this mission. The operations within the company are decentralised, but there is a strong centralisation because of leadership. The leader is the one who binds the members of the organisation and he/she coordinates the tasks.

Lastly, there is also a political organisation. This one is dominated by power and politics. All structural characteristics can be taken away in this organisation. Politics is the most important thing in this organisation. Hierarchical power is also undermined by political games.

What are some of the new organisation types?

The last couple of decennia have seen many new organisational types come into existence. The recent forms are less hierarchical than the classic forms and these new forms try to find more flexibility in their structure.

Twenty years ago, people tried to make their organisations leaner. An organisation can become more lean by more decentralisation, focussing on core components and products, strategic alliance and networks and creating more flexibility. Flexibility can focus on different dimensions of an organisation, like the number of employees, divisions, products, costs, markets and production. However, flexibility is a threat to the integration of the organisation. Strong integration can’t be combined easily with leanness. New organisational types are developed because people want to act with more complexity. Companies have become more complex and people need to adjust to that.

Vertical organisations have functional units like marketing, finance and production, but horizontal organisations are built to satisfy the core processes of the customers. Horizontal organisations don’t just focus on the functional or financial goals, but they also try to satisfy the customer. The work is made more simple and related tasks are combined. In horizontal organisations, most employees are closely related to customers and they ask the clients questions, get feedback and they solve the customers’ problems. Employees will sometimes divide their time between different projects. However, the bit change will result in interpersonal conflict and personal stress. Another disadvantage is that making the customers happy might go against the costs and efficancy.

The hourglass organisation gets its name from the narrow middle. Middle managers aren’t needed constantly, because we have modern information technology which helps to coordinate the effort of different employees. There is much competition for promotion between the employees.

A network organisation looks like a horizontal organisation. The links between the groups in the organisation are reciprocal communication patterns instead of hierarchical authority relations. The networks are formed around the same interests, tasks, products and goals. In that kind of organisation, trust and social control exist as forms of informal integration of the tasks. Virtual organisations are organisations that can reach something with the help of information technology, despite the geographical scatter of employees. These members usually don’t have face-to-face meetings, but they trust in e-mail and voicemail messages. Nowadays, Skype is also used.

There are also organisations that arise to do a project. These are called project organisations. The resources are used for one or a couple of these projects. There are projects leaders and supporting staff members to do the administration. There are also platform organisations that combine the new flexible types with the classical organisational types. These are especially used in Japanese organisations. This has a hierarchical top structure, with flexible teams and a strong middle management that plays a role in the integration of the organisation and in combining the horizontal and vertical structures. Many of the new forms of organisation try to solve the coordination problems (through decentralisation). However, the costs will rise again and this will result in performances with which people aren’t happy with. Centralisation will control the costs, the financial performances will increase and people will be happy again. Then, decentralisation will follow again and this circle will continue.

What is organisational fit?

The interaction between the way an organisation is construed and the situation in which an organisation is operating can be a fit or a misfit.

What is the system theory approach?

The system theory approach states that every element belongs to a certain sub-system of a system that belongs to a higher order. A hierarchy of systems goes from the most simple form to the most complex form and the workings of the complex systems is based on the workings of the lower subsystems. The organisation can be seen as an open system which is in contact with its environment, the departments of the organisation can be seen as a subsystem and the individuals in these departments can also be seen as subsystems.

There are open and closed systems. The difference between these two kinds is the degree. Every system can be partially open and partially closed and the big question that arises is: how big of a role does the environment play in the functioning of the system? Organisations dependent on their environment for the resources, but they are also influenced on different ways by their environment. There are no organisations that are completely closed, but some are more dependent on their environment than others. Closed systems don’t just look at the influences of the environment, but they adapt to their environment and they create a stable harmony with the environment. Open systems constantly keep having an interaction with the environment and this has a preference for these systems (instead of a stable harmony).

What is the contingency approach?

The contingency approach looks at a certain way at organisational fit. According to this approach, organisations are more effective when they are construed or designed to meet the needs of the situation. The contingency variables are technology, environment, culture, size, strategy and structure. A design based on contingency seeks a fit between these variables and a fit between structural variables and external contingencies. According to this approach, these problems are caused by a lack of fit. Research has shown that organisations loose profit when there is no good fit.

How can evironmental uncertainty be assessed and adapted to?

The environment brings a lot of insecurity and many organisations have to deal with many influences of the environment they can’t control. Those influences can arise because of different factors. Insecurity is caused because we can’t predict differences and because we can’t understand the complexity of the environment.

Duncan has developed a two-dimensional model to classify the needs of the environment. On the horizontal axis, there is a simple and complex axis. This axis focuses on the amount and the degree of equality of the factors in the environment. On the vertical axis, you can find the static-dynamic dimension. This dimension makes a distinction between the factors that stay the same over time and the things that change.

When these two dimensions are combined, there are four situations that can tell something about the degree of insecurity of an organisation:

• Simple and static: low perceived insecurity

• Simple and dynamic: moderate high perceived insecurity

• Complex and static: moderate low perceived insecurity

• Complex and dynamic: high perceived insecurity

Some scientists have used this model and adapted it a bit (they added more elements). Mintzberg has added hostility and environmental diversity. Diversity means an organisation deals with different products or markets. Lowering the organisational diversity will result in less complexity. The contingency approach and the open-system approach think that the environment decides the organisational structure. Other scientists think that this isn’t the case. They think that factors like corporate strategy, size and core technology are leading for organisational structure.

How do strategy, size and design fit into contingency?

Strategies are processes that are design to create values, possibilities to seek and to reach goals. Some people think that structure follows strategy. Some scientists have found that structure can have an influence on strategy. It looks like structure and strategy influence each other mutually.

Porter has developed three strategies to get a competitive advantage over organisations that are in the same market. These three strategies are cost leadership (products are offered at a low price and based on efficient low cost production), differentiation and focus (choosing a niche in the market in which the competition is low or absent). The two latter strategies ask for a structure in which close contact with customers is available.

Miles and Snow have designed a typology of strategies that consists out of four categories. The first is defenders. These are organisations with little products or markets, but they are efficient in serving these markets. They can defend their markets by having small unit costs. The second category is analyser. Those organisations have their companies in a stable environment in which they emphasise efficiency and they don’t have to change their structure or products. The defender strategy looks at the environment and is ready to change when needed. The third category is prospectorand these organisations are very innovative and they continuously seek change in their products, markets, processes and structure. They are doing this to be a step ahead of their competition. Efficiency is not important for this group. The fourth and last category is reactors. These are organisations that are forced by their environment to change and to react. They will only change when they are forced to change and this will result in a bad fit between structure and strategy.

What effect does organisational size have?

Another contingency variable is organisation size. This has two ideas. The first is the ‘bigger is better’ model and this model states that the costs per unit decrease when the organisation blossoms. Bigger is seen as more efficient. The second model is called the ‘small is beautiful’ model. This approach states that big organisations and sub-units are plagued by expensive behavioural problems.

Big and impersonal organisations can cause apathy and estrangement and this may result in the employees staying away. Size is important because it has an influence on the fit between the other contingency and structural elements. New results show that it’s better for the managers to follow a middle way between bigger is better and small is beautiful. This is because both models are too simple to explain everything.

What effect does technology have on structure?

Technology can be seen as a contingency variable. Many scientist who have studied organisations, looked at the relationship between structure and technology. Technology are all the processes, ways and instruments that are available in the organisation to let the organisation reach the goals it wants to reach.

Woodward is one of the first who has found effective and ineffective structural patterns of technology in a company. According to her, there are three levels of complexity based on the type of production: small productions, mass productions and flow productions (continuous). The higher the complexity, the more specialisation and supervision is needed.

James Thompson made another design based on technology. According to him there are different types of inter-dependency. One looks at the dependency between the members in relation to the tasks. There are three forms: pooled (tasks are handed from top to bottom), sequential (a task is handed from one person to the next, left to right) and reciprocal (tasks can be handed from left to right and from top to bottom and vice versa). A pooled tasks has a standardised coordination (like restaurant meals), sequential tasks have planning and schemes (computers) and reciprocal tasks have a common adaptation (product development). Many more models have been developed throughout the years.

What is the critique on the contingency approach?

Of course, people have critique on the contingency approach. One of the things people say, is that organisations exist out of processes and not out of stable structural elements. It has everything to do with processes that evolve continuously. Critics say that organisations, their processes and their environment don’t stay the same and that it is therefore impossible to find a proper fit between the elements. Another point of critique is that organisations don’t have much influence on their environment. Organisations need other organisations to get their resources and this will result into a natural source of insecurity. Researchers say that the contingency theory might come in handy, even if it is criticized. It offers us a systematic way to study organisational structures.

One study that looked at 97 small and medium big firms in Canada, showed that strategy and organisational structure are dependent of each other. Strategy had an influence on the structure and structure had an influence on strategy. This was especially the case with large, more innovative and successful companies. Many studies on the relation between technology and structure came to different conclusions. Evidence for contingency is problematic. First, scientists can only study companies that exist. Of course, there have been many companies that have tried to change, but that have not succeeded and (because of this) don’t exist anymore. The failure of the company may have been caused by the wanted change or it can be completely unrelated to that. These companies are (of course) not taken into the studies on company change.

What is organisation effectivity?

Organisation effectivity is the degree in which an organisation can reach its goals. It is difficult to answer if the organisation is effective. What do we look at? An organisation goal may be clear, but it is difficult to decide what criteria are going to be used to see if an organisation is moving towards the goal.

What are the generic organisational effectiveness criteria?

There are four general effectivity criteria to decide whether an organisation is effective or not. These criteria can be used for small and big organisations and also for profit and non-profit organisations.

These four criteria are:

• Goal accomplishment: the organisational results are compared to goals. Deviations from these goals ask for action.

• Resource acquisition

• Strategic constituencies satisfaction: the expectations of important groups are met. Sometimes, this is difficult, because involved groups can have contradictive interests. For example, stakeholders want to have a high dividend, while consumers want to have low prices.

• Internal processes: The organisation functions properly and with minimal resistance. Employees are loyal and satisfied with their job and there is proper exchange of information.

The goals of organisations have changed throughout the years. In the 1960s, companies tried to reach maximum efficiency. In the 1970s, people tried to increase the quality and decrease the costs. There was more competition between countries and customers wanted to get more and more. In the 1980s flexibility turned into a new goal. Customers asked a lot and there was a lot of competition, but because of the new technological inventions, companies could keep their head above water and become more flexible. According to some scientists, only companies that can combine conflicting goals (efficiency and flexibility) will survive.

Experts advise to look at the multidimensional approach to assess the effectivity of modern organisations. There is not a single criterion to assess all the phases of an organisation. Different criterion points need to be combined. In order to find a proper combination of effective criteria, one needs to prepare things. The goals need to be clear and measurable.

How can company decline be seen?

The downward spiral of an organisation is called organisational decline. It is defined as the decline in the resources of a company. Resources are in this case money, clients, talent, products and innovative ideas. Experts claim that decline is inevitable, unless deliberate steps are taken to prevent it. The first step is recognizing the signals of decline.

Managers who see the first signals of decline, can react on time and push reorganisations through in an effective way. Some signals are too many employees, tolerance for incompetence, few clear goals, decline of effective communication, resistance to change, lowered innovation and low morale. In companies in which little or no development has taken place in top directors, problems are ascribed to competition, the government and technological changes. In companies with many new employees, problems are ascribed to internal processes.

It’s usually advised to do something about organisational deterioration when things are going well. During successful periods, the seeds of deterioration are sawn. When things to well, people are too confident and not attentive. However, the world is changing and new competitors are coming. New technologies are replacing the old technologies. These external powers can make an organisation irrelevant. It’s not always the fault of a manager. Some things in life can’t just be prevented.

How can organisations be diagnosed and changed? - Chapter 15

Nowadays, companies have to be flexible for change to keep up with their dynamic environment. A growing company goes through revolution and crisis, which means that growth is not a steady upward slope.

What are forces of change?

There are external and internal forces of change.

External forces for change come from outside the company.

• Demographic characteristics: age, education, gender

• Technological advances: automation

• Market changes: fusions, mergers, recessions

• Social and political pressures: wars, values, leadership

Internal forces for change come from within the company.

• Size changes

• Human resource problems and prospects

How can the need for change be diagnosed?

Individual diagnosis for change many be initiated by demographics, job title and job assigned. Also employee record can be relevant. Also effectiveness and well-being are important. A diagnosis of communication checks how people within the company perceive, attribute and whether external signals are received and understood the way the way they were intended to. Perception is very hard to diagnose. When motivation is diagnosed, it is important the look at more factors than just financial incentives.

How can motivation problems be diagnosed?

Motivation is very important, but managers often choose unsuitable incentives to improve motivation. There are four bad incentive systems: overemphasizing financial incentives, too weak incentives, perverse incentive (rewards for things you don't have any control over), and incentives clashing with organisational culture.

How can groups and teams be diagnosed?

Groups and teams can be diagnosed with the team diagnostic survey by Wageman, Hackman and Lehman. It is a legit method, however, it does not measure conflict in groups and teams. Organisational climate diagnosis can be based on the eight dimensions named in chapter 11. Some conflict is desired within as long as it provided positive outcomes.

When structure and design are diagnosed, it is important to relate it with the company's environment. The organisation's form and type needs to be identified. Furthermore it important to look at the company's strategy.

How can a culture be diagnosed?

A company's culture is hard to measure because it is invisible. The most common diagnosis for organisational culture is based on the competing values framework. There are many alternatives for measuring organisational culture.

How can power, politics and conflict be diagnosed?

Power, politics and conflict cannot be diagnosed all at once in one single process. It is helpful to seperate the three concepts. Politics and power can be diagnosed by creating an internal stakeholder analysis. The difficulty in diagnosing conflict is that managers can't go their employees and ask about it, because social desirability will prevent them from being honest about it.

What are the models and dynamics of planned change?

What is Lewin's change model?

Lewin developed a model which explains how to initiate, manage and stabilise the change process. The model implies that change can only take place when there is motivation for change.

The model has three stages:

• Unfreezing: It focusses on making the employees unsatisfied with the old way, so they get motivated for change. Benchmarking is a process where a company compares their company with the most important organisations in their industry.

• Changing: New information an models are suggested to the employees. The employees should learn a new point of view on certain concepts.

• Refreezing: Changes are being stabilised by supporting the employees with the new way of doing things.

What are the roles of complexity, cost and uncertainty?

There is a generic three-way typology of change:

• Adaptive change: lowest in complexity, cost and uncertainty. It implements a change which has already been implemented by the business unit or another business unit.

• Innovative change: mediocre in complexity, cost and uncertainty.

• Radically innovative change: high in complexity, cost and uncertainty. They are hard to implement and can be a threat to managerial thrust and employee job security.

What are the dimension of change?

There are two ways to implement change methods. These approaches are called Theory E and Theory O. Theory E stands focuses on the financial aspect of the company, whereas theory O focuses on the development of the organisation by learning.

For all the dimensions of change (goals, leadership, focus, process, reward system and use of consultants) there is an action in Theory E and Theory O, and one for both combined. For example, with goals, the action from Theory E would be to maximise shareholder value. For Theory O, it is to develop organisational capabilities. Both combined would be to explicitly confront the tension between economic value and organisational capability.

What is Kotter's design approach for leading organisational change?

Kotter states that organisational change usually fails due to senior management errors. He created sequential steps to lead organisational change.

The steps are:

• Create a sense of need for change

• Establish the guiding coalition

• Develop a vision and strategy

• Communicate the vision of the change

• Enable broad-based action

• Create short-term wins and improvements

• Develop more gains and consolidate more change

• Secure the new approaches in the culture

How does change in progress work?

Pettigrew and Whip studied operational and strategic changes. The high performers were different from the lesser performers because the high performers did the following things:

• managed external assessment more profoundly

• led change

• created a link between strategic and operational change

• managed their human resources as assets and liabilities

• managed agreement in the entire process of competition and change

What is the difference between episodic and continuous change?

Episodic change is irregular, discontinuous but intended change.

Continuous change is constant, evolving and cumulative change.

How can resistance to change be managed?

Resistance to change is an emotional/behavioural response to real or perceived work changes.

Why do people and organisations resist change?

There are nine reasons why people resist to change, which are:

• Surprise and fear of the unknown

• Climate of distrust

• Anxiety of failure

• Loss of status or job security

• Peer pressure

• Interruption of cultural traditions or group relations

• Personality conflicts

• Absence of tact or bad timing

• Non-reinforcing reward systems

How can an organisation prepare to change?

Before any organisation wants to change it should always be prepared. Therefore it is important that before the change:

• The managers should have a positive emotional evaluation towards change.

• The employees should be well informed about the change.

• Be aware that the resistance to change is not always conscious.

• Make sure employees perceive that the changes provides more benefits than personal costs

How can resistance to change be overcome?

When an organisation is ready for the change, the organisation can use various alternative strategies to overcome resistance to change:

• Education + communication

• Participation + involvement

• Facilitation + support

• Negotiation + agreement

• Manipulation + co-optation

• Explicit +explicit coercion

What is organisation development?

Organisation development (OD) are techniques or tools used to implement organisational change through commitment, co-ordination and competence.

The ten most important dependent variables of OD are:

• Promote organisational renewal

• Engage organisational change of culture

• Increase profitability and competitiveness

• Secure the health and well-being of the organisation and the employees

• Assist learning and development

• Enhance problem-solving

• Introduce and/or manage change

• Empower system and process advancement

• Support adaptation to change

There are four characteristics of OD, which are:

• OD and profound change: change agents usually use OD for significant, long-lasting improvement.

• OD is value-loaded: many OD consultants bring certain values or biases into the client organisation. So do they prefer co-optation over conflict, self-control over institutional control, and democrative and participative management over autocratic management.

• OD is a cycle of diagnosis and prescription: OD consultants near the 'sick' organisation, 'diagnose' the illness, 'prescribe' and implement a cure and 'monitor' progress.

• OD is process-oriented: OD consultants focus on how things are done more than the content of activities.

Organisational Behaviour - Sinding et al. (6th edition) - Practice Materials

What are the foundations of organisational behaviour? - Chapter 1

• What does organisational behaviour mean?

• What are the major differences between the theories of Taylor and Fayol?

• What was the new aspect of the human relations movement?

• How can people interpret organisations?

• How can organisational behaviour be applied in real life?

What are personal dynamics? - Chapter 2

• What are the different aspects of the individual?

• What are the six pillars for self-esteem?

• What are the sources of self-efficacy?

• Is strong self-monitoring always a positive competence?

• What are the different types of personality according to Myers and Briggs?

• Is intelligence born or learned?

• What are the cognitive styles?

• How can learningstyles be combined?

What are values, atitudes and emotions? - Chapter 3

• What is the difference between instrumental values and terminal values?

• What are the three components which explain attitude?

• Which variables, besides attitude, explain behaviour?

• What is the difference between emotion and affection?

• The ripple effect is an example of …?

• What are the five Cs that improve workflow?

How does information and communication function in organisations? - Chapter 4

• What is perception?

• What factors influence perception?

• What are the four fases of the social information-processing model of perception?

• Which theories about attributes are important?

• What are the four biases which cause wrong interpreted behaviour?

• What is self-fulfilling prophesy?

• How are the content level and the relation level of communication related?

• What are the four barriers for effective communication?

• What is the difference between verbal and non-verbal communication?

• What are the three styles of communication?

• What is the difference between hierarchical communication and communication through the grapevine?

• How do men and women differ in communication?

• Which two phenomena's arise because of asymmetric information?

• How do you choose the right medium to transfer information?

What are content motivation theories? - Chapter 5

• What is motivation?

• What is the difference between content theories and process theories?

• What are the differences between Maslow and Alderfer?

• Which needs are essential in the need theory of McClelland?

• What is 'job enrichment' according to Herzberger?

• What is the formula of MPS?

What are process motivation theories? - Chapter 6

• What is true according to the expectancy theory?

• What does instrumentality mean?

• Why can the expectancy theory be criticised?

• What are the three components for application of the equity theory?

• What is the difference between positive and negative inequity?

• What are Locke's four motivational mechanisms?

• Why does setting specific, difficult goals lead to poorer performance?

• For which words is SMART an abbreviation?

• What determines the recipient's openness to feedback?

• What are the three types of awards?

• Besides the different types of rewards, which four organisation's reward norms dictate the nature of exchange?

• What are the three general criteria for the distribution of rewards?

What are group dynamics? - Chapter 7

• What are the two specific types of informal groups?

• What are the two basic functions of a group?

• What are the tree kinds of people in social networks?

• What are the five stages of the Tuckman model of group forming?

• What are the four reasons norms are embedded?

• What is the optimal size of groups which make high quality decisions?

• What are the major threats to group effectiveness?

• What are four symptoms of group thinking?

• What are the four explanations for social loafing?

How do teams and teamwork operate in organisations? - Chapter 8

• What are the four criteria to call a group a team?

• What are the do-roles, think-roles and social-roles of Belbin?

• What are interpersonal KSAs and what are self-management KSAs?

• What are the most common symptoms of failure of teams?

• What are the four purposes of team-building according to Richard Beckhard?

• What are the six guidelines to build and maintain trust?

• What is the difference between socio-emotional cohesiveness and instrumental cohesiveness?

• How are groups of workers that are given ‘administrative oversight’ such as planning, monitoring and staffing for their task domains called?

How does decision-making work? - Chapter 9

• Which three methods can be used to identify problems according to the rational model?

• What are the two categories of judgemental heuristics?

• What are the four independent streams of the garbage can model?

• What are the three strategies of the contingency model?

• What are the four styles of decision-making?

• How is the tendency to stick to an ineffective course of action when it is unlikely that the bad situation can be reversed called?

• Name two advantages of decision-making in groups.

• What are the four rules of brainstorming?

• What is the difference between fast thinking and slow thinking?

• What does the '30-second soap box' mean?

• What are the five stages of creativity?

What is organisational culture? - Chapter 10

• What are the two levels of organisational culture?

• Which values are usually made up by the founders, espoused values or enacted values?

• What are the two centralised types of organisational values?

• What are the four types of organisation cultures?

• What are the three phases of the socialisation process?

• During which phase of the socialisation process do people experience a reality shock?

• What is the difference between high-context and low-context cultures?

• What are the five cultural dimensions of Hofstede?

• What are the five dimensions of Trompenaars?

• What is the difference between monochronic time and polychronic time?

• What are proxemics?

• What is an expatriate?

What is an organisational climate? - Chapter 11

• What is the difference between culture and climate?

• What is the four-step process of stereotyping?

• What is the 'glass ceiling'?

• What are eight action options that can be used to address diversity issues?

• What are three diversity practices?

• What are the three dimensions of Karasek's job demand-control model?

• What are the most important types of stressors?

• What are the three phases of a burn-out?

• What are the three coping strategies?

How do power, politics and conflict work in organisations? - Chapter 12

• Name two 'soft' and two 'hard' influence tactics.

• What are three possible influence outcomes when someone uses the exchange tactics?

• What are three desired outcomes of conflicts?

• Name three negative aspects of groupthink.

• What are five alternatives to solve dysfunctional conflicts?

• What are the two types of negotiation?

• What are French and Raven's five bases of power?

• What are the four motives for making a poor impression?

• What is the highest form of empowerment?

How does leadership work in organisations? - Chapter 13

• What is the difference between trait theories and behavioural theories?

• What is the difference between consideration structure and initiating structure?

• What are the five leadership styles according to the Robert Blake and Jane Mouton Leadership Grid?

• What are the two kind of leaders Fiedler separates?

• What are the three dimensions of situational control?

• What are the four leadership styles of the path-goal theory?

• What are contingency factors?

• What does readiness mean?

• What is the difference between transactional leadership and charismatic leadership?

• What are the five characteristics of coaching?

What is organisational architecture? - Chapter 14

• What is the definition of an organisation?

• What four things do organisations have in common?

• What is an advantage of unity of command?

• What is a difference between mechanistic and organic organisations?

• What are the six contingency variables?

• What are the analysers (Miles and Snow)?

• What do Miles and Snow call a strategy in which an organisation is very innovative and continuously seeks to change products and markets to stay ahead of the competition?

• What is the ‘bigger is better’ principle?

• What is organisational decline?

• With which four things can one assess organisational effectivity?

​​How can organisations be diagnosed and changed? - Chapter 15

• What are two extern and two intern forces of change?

• What are the three phases of Lewis' model of planned change?

• What does benchmarking mean?

• What is the difference between theory E and theory O?

• Call the first three steps of Kotter's plan to lead organisational change.

• What is the difference between episodic change and continuous change?

• What are three reasons for resistance to change?

• What are two alternative strategies to cope with resistance to change?

• What are the four characteristics of organisational development?

• What are four incentive systems that are bad for motivation?

Answers

Chapter 1

• What does organisational behaviour mean?

It is an interdisciplinary fied which focusses on understanding and managing people on the working field.

• What are the major differences between the theories of Taylor and Fayol?

Fayol doesn't completely divide working and thinking, Taylor does. Also, for Fayol 'Unity of command is an important aspect. This is not the case for Taylor.

• What was the new aspect of the human relations movement?

People were seen as individuals in stead of parts of a machine, which made labor unions demand better working conditions for employees and scientist demanded more attention for the human factor within an organisation.

• How can people interpret organisations?

As machines, organisms, brains, political systems, physical prisons, flux and transformation systems or dominance instruments.

• How can organisational behaviour be applied in real life?

By instrumental use, conceptual use or symbolic use.

Chapter 2

• What are the different aspects of the individual?

Pesonallity and self-concept. Self-concept contains self-esteem, self-efficacy, self-monitoring and locus of control.

• What are the six pillars for self-esteem?

Live consiously, be self-accepting, take personal responsibility, be self assertive, live purposefully and have personal integrity.

• What are the sources of self-efficacy?

Previous experience, behavioural models, persuasion of others, and emotional/physical state.

• Is strong self-monitoring always a positive competence?

No, too strong self-monitoring makes an unfair and untrustworthy person, which can adjust very well to different situations.

• What are the different types of personality according to Myers and Briggs?

Sensing-thinking, intuiting-thinking, sensing-feeling, intuiting-feeling.

• Is intelligence born or learned?

Intelligence is a combination of learned competences (nurture) and qualities a person is born with (nature).

• What are the cognitive styles?

According to Krirton: Adaptive and innovative. According to Riding: wholists, analytics, verbalisers and imagers.

• How can learningstyles be combined?

Four ways: diverger, assimilator, converger and accomodator

Chapter 3

• What is the difference between instrumental values and terminal values?

  Instrumental values are desired behaviour to reach a certain goal. Terminal values are the goals a person wants to reach.What are the working values?

  Intrinsic, extrinsic, social and prestige values.

• What are the three components which explain attiturde?

  Coginitive component, affective component and behavioural component.

• Which variables, besides attitude, explain behaviour?

  Subjective norm and perceived control of behaviour.

• What is the difference between emotion and affection?

Emotions are complex human responds to personal achievements and setbacks. Affection is about the general feeling people experience, it contains emotions and moods.

• The ripple effect is an example of …?

  Emotional contagion.

• What are the five Cs that improve workflow?

  Clarity, centre, choice, commitment and challenge.

Chapter 4

• What is perception?

Perception is a cognitive process which enables interpretation and understanding of the environment.

• What factors influence perception?

The perceivers, the receiver and the setting.

• What are the four fases of the social information-processing model of perception?

Fase 1: selective attention/comprehension, fase 2: encoding and simplification, fase 3: storage and retention, fase 4: retrieval and response.

• Which theories about attributes are important?

There are three important theories: 1) the Correspondent inference theory of Jones and Davis. 2) the Co-variation theory of Kelley. 3) Weiner's attribution model.

• What are the four biases which cause wrong interpreted behaviour?

Fundamental error, actor-behaviour effect, self serving bias and fundamental attribution error.

• What is self-fulfilling prophesy?

Expectations of people determine there performance. People behave in a way to make there expectations come true.

• How are the content level and the relation level of communication related?

The content level is about 'What' and contains factual and congintive information. The relation level is about 'How' and contains information about our emotional status and attitudes regarding to our environment.

• What are the four barriers for effective communication?

Process barriers, personal barriers, physical barriers and semantic barriers.

• What is the difference between verbal and non-verbal communication?

Verbal communication is more clear and aware and contains actual words or written signs. Non-verbal communication's signals are more automatic and unconscious.

• What are the three styles of communication?

Assertive communication, aggressive communication and non-assertive communication.

• What is the difference between hierarchical communication and communication through the grapevine?

Hierarchical communication is the exchange of information between managers and employees. The information flows from the manager to the employee. The grapevine is the unofficial communication system of the informal organisation.

• How do men and women differ in communication?

Men and women have different linguistic styles. Man communicate with report talk an women communicate with raport talk.

• Which two phenomena's arise because of asymmetric information?

Averse selection and moral hazard.

• How do you choose the right medium to transfer information?

Make sure the information richness matches with the complexity of the situation or the problem.

Chapter 5

• What is motivation?

Motivation is the professional process which causes excitement, guidelines and persistence.

• What is the difference between content theories and process theories?

Content theories explain what motivates people and process theories explain the process itself that motivates people.

• What are the differences between Maslow and Alderfer?

1) ERG states that more than one need can motivate at the same time. Maslow does not stat this. 2) ERG states a continuum, Maslow's hierarchical model does not state this. 3) ERG is more consistent in individual differences.

• Which needs are essential in the need theory of McClelland?

Need for achievement, need for power and need for affiliation.

• What is 'job enrichment' according to Herzberger?

The employee should have the opportunity to experience improvement by vertical expansion.

• What is the formula of MPS?

MPS = {(skill var. + task id. + task sign.)/3} x autonomy x feedback

Chapter 6

• What is true according to the expectancy theory?

It is the idea that people’s actions are driven by expected consequences.

• What does instrumentality mean?

A person’s belief that a particular outcome depends on performing at a specific level (performance --> outcome perception).

• Why can the expectancy theory be criticised?

Because the theory is difficult to test and because measures used to asses expectancy, instrumentality and valence have questionable validity.

• What are the three components for application of the equity theory?

1) Awareness of the major components of the individual-organisation exchange relationship, which are inputs and outputs. 2) this relationship is important for giving the employees the idea of what is equity and inequity. 3) the equity theory focuses on what people are motivated to do when they feel like they are treated unfair and want to reduce this inequity.

• What is the difference between positive and negative inequity?

Positive inequity is when the outcome to input ratio is greater than of the other person and negative inequity is when the individual enjoys greater outcomes for similar inputs.

• What are Locke's four motivational mechanisms?

1) Goals are personally meaningful and direct one's attention on what is relevant and important. 2) goals motivate us to act so that the level of effort expended proportionately to the difficulty of the goal. 3) the effort expended on a task over an extended period of time is represented by persistence. 4) goals can encourage people to develop strategies and action plans enabling them to achieve their goals.

• Why does setting specific, difficult goals lead to poorer performance?

Because employees are not likely to make an increased effort to achieve complex goals unless they support them. Another reason is because novel and complex tasks take employees longer to complete.

• For which words is SMART an abbreviation?

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Result-oriented, and Time bound.

• What determines the recipient's openness to feedback?

Self-esteem, needs, self-efficacy, goals and desire for feedback.

• What are the three types of awards?

Financial awards, social awards and psychic awards.

• Besides the different types of rewards, which four organisation's reward norms dictate the nature of exchange?

Profit maximisation, equity, equality and need.

• What are the three general criteria for the distribution of rewards?

1) performance in terms of result. 2) Performance in the therms of actions and behaviours. 3) non-performance consideration.

Chapter 7

• What are the two specific types of informal groups?

Friendship groups and interest groups.

• What are the two basic functions of a group?

Organisational functions and individual functions.

• What are the tree kinds of people in social networks?

Star, isolate and bridge builder.

• What are the five stages of the Tuckman model of group forming?

Forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.

• What are the four reasons norms are embedded?

Group/organisational survival, clarification of behavioural expectations, avoidance of embarrassment and clarification of central values/unique identity.

• What is the optimal size of groups which make high quality decisions?

Three to five people.

• What are the major threats to group effectiveness?

The Asher affect, groupthink and social loafing.

• What are four symptoms of group thinking?

For example: Invulnerability, Inherent mortality, Rationalisation, Stereotyped views of opposition, Self-censorship, Illusion of unanimity, Peer pressure and Mind guards

• What are the four explanations for social loafing?

Equity of effort, Loss of personal accountability, Motivational loss due to sharing rewards and Co-ordination loss as more people perform the task

Chapter 8

• What are the four criteria to call a group a team?

Group members share the same goals in relation to their work, in order to achieve these goals the members should interact with each other, every team member has their own clear and rated roles.

• What are the do-roles, think-roles and social-roles of Belbin?

Do-roles: Implementer, shaper, completer-finisher. Think-roles: Specialist, Monitor-evaluator, Plant. Social-roles: Resource Investigator, Teamworker, Co-ordinator.

• What are interpersonal KSAs and what are self-management KSAs?

Interpersonal KSAs: Conflict resolution KSAs, Collaborative problem-solving KSAs and Communicative KSAs. Self-management KSAs: Goal-setting and performance management KSAs and Planning and task co-ordination KSAs.

• What are the most common symptoms of failure of teams?

Hidden agendas, lack of understanding, wrong mix of team members and unhealthy team environment.

• What are the four purposes of team-building according to Richard Beckhard?

The four purposes of team building are: 1. to set goals, 2. to analyse the way work is performed, 3. to examine the way a group is working and its processes, 4. to examine relationships among the people.

• What are the six guidelines to build and maintain trust?

Communication, support, respect, fairness, predictability, and competence.

• What is the difference between socio-emotional cohesiveness and instrumental cohesiveness?

Socio-emotional cohesiveness develops when individuals derive emotional satisfaction from team participation. Instrumental cohesiveness develops when team members are mutually dependent on one another as they do not believe in achieving the team’s goal alone.

• How are groups of workers that are given ‘administrative oversight’ such as planning, monitoring and staffing for their task domains called?

Self-managed teams.

Chapter 9

• Which three methods can be used to identify problems according to the rational model?

Historical cues, planning approaches and perceptions of others.

• What are the two categories of judgemental heuristics?

Available heuristic and the representativeness heuristic.

• What are the four independent streams of the garbage can model?

Problems, solutions, participants and choice opportunities.

• What are the three strategies of the contingency model?

Aided-analytic, Unaided-analytic and non-analytic.

• What are the four styles of decision-making?

The four styles are: directive, analytical, conceptual and behavioural.

• How is the tendency to stick to an ineffective course of action when it is unlikely that the bad situation can be reversed called?

Escalation to commitment

• Call two advantages of decision-making in groups.

For example: groups contain a greater pool of knowledge, provide more perspectives, create more comprehension, increase decision acceptance and create a training ground for inexperienced employees

• What are the four rules of brainstorming?

The four rules are: 1. Generate and write down as many ideas as possible, 2. do not set limits, 3. do not criticise during the stage of idea generation, 4. Ignore seniority and think freely.

• What is the difference between fast thinking and slow thinking?

Fast thinking happens automatically, slow thinking is conscious and takes effort.

• What does the '30-second soap box' mean?

It is a problem-solving technique where one has 30 seconds to argue for or against an idea.

• What are the five stages of creativity?

Preparation, concentration, incubation, illumination and verification.

Chapter 10

• What are the two levels of organisational culture?

The visible level: artefacts, and the less or not visible level: values and believes.

• Which values are usually made up by the founders, espoused values or enacted values?

Espoused values

• What are the two centralised types of organisational values?

Elite and leadership.

• What are the four types of organisation cultures?

Four types are: 1. Adaptability culture, 2. External control culture, 3. Development culture, 4. Internal consistency culture.

• What are the three phases of the solicitation process?

Anticipatory solicitation, encounter, and change and acquisition.

• During which phase of the solicitation process do people experience a reality shock?

During phase two: encounter.

• What is the difference between high-context and low-context cultures?

High context consists of social trust, personal relations and goodwill and agreement by general trust. Low context consist of ‘business first’, expertise and performance, agreement by specific, legalistic contracts and efficient negotiations.

• What are the five cultural dimensions of Hofstede?

The five dimensions are: 1. Power distance, 2. Individualism vs. collectivism, 3. Masculinity vs. femininity, 4. Uncertainty avoidance, 5. Long-term vs. short-term orientation.

• What are the five dimensions of Trompenaars?

The five dimensions are 1. Power distance, 2. Individualism vs. collectivism, 3. Masculinity vs. femininity, 4. Uncertainty avoidance, 5. Long-term vs. short-term orientation.

• What is the difference between monochronic time and polychronic time?

Monochronic time means you prefer to do one thing at the time because time is limited.

Polychronic time means you prefer to do several things at the same time because time is flexible.

• What are proxemics?

Cultural expectations about interpersonal space.

• What is an expatriate?

Someone who lives or works in an other country than their home country.

Chapter 11

• What is the difference between culture and climate?

Culture is resistant to change and is about the examination of underlying values and assumptions. Climate, however, only examines surface level manifestations.

• What is the four-step process of stereotyping?

Categorising people into groups, inferring that people within a category possess the same traits, forming expectations, interpreting their behaviour.

• What is the 'glass ceiling'?

An invisible barrier separating women from advancing into top management.

• What are eight action options that can be used to address diversity issues?

Include/exclude, deny, assimilate, suppress, isolate, tolerate, build relationships and foster mutual adaption.

• What are three diversity practices?

Accountability practices, development practices and recruitment practices.

• What are the three dimensions of Karasek's job demand-control model?

Psychological demand of a job, amount of autonomy and social support.

• What are the most important types of stressors?

Individual, group, organisational and those outside the organisation.

• What are the three phases of a burn-out?

Emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and feeling a lack of personal accomplishment.

• What are the three coping strategies?

Control strategy, escape strategy and symptom management strategy.

Chapter 12

• Name two 'soft' and two 'hard' influence tactics.

Examples for soft: Rational persuasion, Inspirational appeals, Consultation, Ingratiation, Personal appeals. Examples for hard: Exchange, Coalition tactics, Pressure, Legitimating tactics.

• What are three possible influence outcomes when someone uses the exchange tactics?

Commitment, compliance or resistance.

• What are three desired outcomes of conflicts?

Agreement, stronger relationships and learning.

• Name three negative aspects of groupthink.

Three negative aspects are: 1. members of in-groups consider themselves as a collection of unique individuals but other groups as being similar. 2. Outsiders are seen as threat but in-group members view themselves as morally correct. 3. The perception of reality distorts as in-group members overact differences between their group and the other group.

• What are five alternatives to solve dysfunctional conflicts?

Integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and compromising

• What are the two types of negotiation?

Distributive and integrative. The first type concerns that sharing of a fixed amount, whereas the integrative type of negotiation goes beyond. It calls for a win-win strategy where all can benefit.

• What are French and Raven's five bases of power?

Reward power, coercive power, legitimate power, expert power and referent power.

• What are the four motives for making a poor impression?

Avoidance, obtain concrete rewards, exit and power.

• What is the highest form of empowerment?

Delegation.

Chapter 13

• What is the difference between trait theories and behavioural theories?

Traits theories state that leaders are born with leadership skills and behavioural theories state that leader are shaped by improving and developing their behaviour.

• What is the difference between consideration structure and initiating structure?

Consideration structure focuses on group member’s needs and desires. The initiating structure is leader behaviour that organises and defines what to do next to maximise the output.

• What are the five leadership styles according to the Robert Blake and Jane Mouton Leadership Grid?

Country club management, impoverished management, middle-of-the-road management, team management and authority compliance.

• What are the two kind of leaders Fiedler separates?

Task-oriented and Relation-oriented.

• What are the three dimensions of situational control?

Leader-member relations, task structure and position power.

• What are the four leadership styles of the path-goal theory?

Directive leadership, supportive leadership, participative leadership and achievement-oriented leadership.

• What are contingency factors?

Situational factors that make one style of leadership a better choice than another.

• What does readiness mean?

Readiness is the amount of willingness someone possesses to complete a task. Willingness, thereby, is a mix of confidence, commitment and motivation.

• What is the difference between transactional leadership and charismatic leadership?

The transactional leadership tries to engage employees’ behaviour. This means leaders motivate employees by giving rewards and exert corrective action when performance goals are not obtained. The charismatic leadership enables followers to develop deep commitment. Leaders using this approach can transform followers by appealing to followers’ values and personal identity.

• What are the five characteristics of coaching?

Commitment, skill building, support, team builder en result oriented.

Chapter 14

• What is the definition of an organisation?

Organisations are defined as systems of coordinated activities and they exist in order to get things of a group of people done.

• What four things do organisations have in common?

All organisations have four things in common: division of labour, hierarchy of authority, coordination of effort and the people in an organisation have a goal in common.

• What is an advantage of unity of command?

Unity of command means that every employee has to report to only one manager. When people report to more managers, organisations might become inefficient because there are conflicting demands.

• What is a difference between mechanistic and organic organisations?

Mechanistic organisation are rigid bureaucracies with strict rules, top-down communication and narrow defined tasks. Organic organisations are flexible and exists out of individuals with multiple talents that execute different tasks.

• What are the six contingency variables?

The contingency variables are technology, environment, culture, size, strategy and structure. A design based on contingency seeks a fit for these variables and a fit between structural variables and external contingencies.

• What are the analysers (Miles and Snow)?

They have their companies in stable environments in which they can emphasise efficiency and they don’t have to change their structure.

• What do Miles and Snow call a strategy in which an organisation is very innovative and continuously seeks to change products and markets to stay ahead of the competition?

Prospectors

• What is the ‘bigger is better’ principle?

The bigger is better model states that the costs per unit production decline when the organisation grows. Bigger is seen as more efficient.

• What is organisational decline?

It is defined as the decline in resources of the organisation (resources are customers, employees, ideas, products and money).

• With which four things can one assess organisational effectivity?

In order to assess organisational effectivity, you have to look at goal accomplishment (results), the resources, satisfaction of strategic constituencies and internal processes (the organisation is functioning well and there is little resistance).

Chapter 15

• What are two extern and two intern forces of change?

External examples: Demographic characteristics, Technological advances, Market changes, Social and political pressures. Internal examples: Size changes, Human resource problems and prospects

• What are the three phases of Lewis' model of planned change?

Unfreezing, changing, refreezing.

• What does benchmarking mean?

A process where a company compares their company with the most important organisations in their industry.

• What is the difference between theory E and theory O?

Theory E stands focuses on the financial aspect of the company, whereas theory O focusses on the development of the organisation by learning.

• Call the first three steps of Kotter's plan to lead organisational change.

The three steps are: 1. Create a sense of need for change. 2. Establish the guiding coalition. 3. Develop a vision and strategy.

• What is the difference between episodic change and continuous change?

Episodic change is irregular, discontinuous but intended change. Continuous change is constant, evolving and cumulative change.

• What are three reasons for resistance to change?

For example: 1. Surprise and fear of the unknown, 2. Climate of distrust, 3. Anxiety of failure, 4. Loss of status or job security, 5. Peer pressure, 6. Interruption of cultural traditions or group relations, 7. Personality conflicts 8. Absence of tact or bad timing, 9. Non-reinforcing reward systems

• What are two alternative strategies to cope with resistance to change?

For example: Education + communication, Participation + involvement, Facilitation + support, Negotiation + agreement, Manipulation + co-optation, Explicit +explicit coercion

• What are the four characteristics of organisational development?

OD and profound change, OD is value-loaded, OD is a cycle of diagnosis and prescription,OD is process-oriented.

• What are four incentive systems that are bad for motivation?

The four bad incentive sytems are: overemphasizing financial incentives, too weak incentives, perverse incentives, and incentives clashing with organisational culture.

Organisational Behaviour - ExamTickets

What are the foundations of organisational behaviour? - Chapter 1

• This chapter focuses on the history of the study of organisational behaviour, and on the different ways to view an organisation. It might help to make a visual timeline.
• There are a lot of names in this chapter. Try to find the similarities and dissimilarities between viewpoints in order to keep them all straight in your head.

What are personal dynamics? - Chapter 2

• This chapter is all about personality, but don't forget that the book is about organisational behaviour. Apply every concept to the workplace: what are the organisational advantages and disadvantages of the different personality aspects named in this chapter?
• Personality testing can be a controversial way of selection. Make sure you understand how seemingly neutral tests can be biased.

What are values, atitudes and emotions? - Chapter 3

• This chapter consists of two parts: attitudes and emotions. Make sure you understand how these two influence each other.
• Flow is a very popular concept. Try to think of examples of situations where flow can exist.

How does information and communication function in organisations? - Chapter 4

• This is a long chapter, make sure you take enough time for it.
• Think of a situation where something went wrong with communication. Give advice based on the information in this chapter.

What are content motivation theories? - Chapter 5

• Multiple theories are discussed in this chapter. Make an overview of what name goes with which theory, and what kind of advice you would give an organisation based on the different theories.
• Job satisfaction is a very important concept. Devote some extra time to it.

What are process motivation theories? - Chapter 6

• Be sure you know what SMART stands for, you'll encounter this many times.
• Here as well, multiple theories are described. Make sure you understand the differences. Can they complement each other or do they exclude each other?

What are group dynamics? - Chapter 7

• Make sure you really understand the threats to group effectivity. How can they be solved or prevented?
• To liven up the material, you could apply it to yourself (or friends): what role do you have in a group? What norms and values are important to you?

How do teams and teamwork operate in organisations? - Chapter 8

• This chapter is about teams, but the subjects of the previous chapters are also relevant. Try to combine them: what effect do emotions have on teams? What kind of personalities would go best together?
• To get a good overview of the material you could make a flow chart. What actions lead to an effective team?

How does decision-making work? - Chapter 9

• This chapter has a lot of terms. Making a list of them can help you study them.
• The part about Daniel Kahneman and fast and slow thinking is relatively recent, I think it's very possible it will be on the exam.

What is organisational culture? - Chapter 10

• To practice, think of a few organisations and lay out the culture they have. You could use real or imagined organisations. Use the classifications in this chapter.
• Think of what the pros and cons are of the different classifications. When would you use which one?

What is an organisational climate? - Chapter 11

• This chapter is quite straightforward and it has a lot of information you probably already know.
• Be sure you know what the eight dimensions of psychological climate are.

How do power, politics and conflict work in organisations? - Chapter 12

• This chapter is about power, politics and conflict. Make sure you understand why these three concepts were taken together in one chapter.
• Don't forget that power, politics and conflict are not by definition negative. Try to see the balance.

How does leadership work in organisations? - Chapter 13

• This chapter features different approaches and multiple models. It might help to create a mindmap.
• A helpful thought experiment could be to create the perfect leader. How does he or she go trough the day?

What is organisational architecture? - Chapter 14

• This chapter is very large, make sure you have enough time for it, or split it up into two chapters.
• The contingency approach is a major part of this chapter, make sure you understand it well.

​​How can organisations be diagnosed and changed? - Chapter 15

• This chapter is about organisational change. The biggest challenge in organisational change is resistance to change. Explain to someone else how you would react to resistance if you were a consultant.
• One example of Theory E and Theory O is given. Try to apply it to one of the other dimension to see if you understand it well.